The Indian government is using its open source Open Government Platform (OGPL) to host 'Data Portal India', its open data portal, unveiled on 13 August. The same portal software is used for India's 'eGov AppStore', a repository of re-usable applications for the country's public administrations, officially opened on 31 May. OGPL is being developed by the governments of India and the United States. It is built on the Drupal content management system (version 7) and the MySQL relational database system.
Data Portal India provides public access to datasets and applications from India's ministries and government departments. It starts with a collection of 3500 datasets created by 49 public administrations, on for example agriculture, defence, health and energy.
In May, the eGove Appstore started with a collection of 29 applications, components and web services. Goals of this repository including allowing the sharing of applications, avoiding duplication of effort and cost in development and speeding up the development and deployment of e-government software. Introducing the platform, India's National Informatics Centre writes: "Presently, the eGov AppStore is primarily a repository showcasing our applications and components which were developed for specific requirement of (India's) States."
OGPL CKAN Joinup
Development of the OGPL started in November 2011, with the first version made available in March 2012. OGPL is being developed by the National Informatics Centre in India and the US' General Services Administration. The software is made available on the Github repository.
The OGPL aims to offer four main components. The first module is a website, allowing public administrations to publish datasets, documents, tools and applications. Second is a module to manage the agencies that can upload datasets. Third is a content management system and fourth is a module for collating and disseminating feedback on datasets.
The platform is similar to the open source solution Joinup, developed by the European Commission and used on the eponymous platform. OGPL focusses on offering a hub for data and applications, Joinup also includes tools to allow collaboration and development. Like OGPL, Joinup is based on Drupal, however on version 6. It is reused by Vietnam for 'Openroad' and by Australia and New-Zealand, for 'Openray'. The Open Knowledge Foundation also offers download of the open source software used for its own data hub, CKAN. It is used for example by the Dutch, UK and US government open data portals.
More information:
Open Government Platform OGPL
OGPL on Github
Indian government's eGov AppStore
Data Portal India
Futuregov Asia news item
Techcircle news item
Joinup news item