Barriers to adoption of free/open source software in central government offices of India

Abstract

Free/ Open Source Software (F/OSS) has grown incredibly over the past few years offering many opportunities for the development of nations and bridging the digital divides in countries. The governments of countries world-wide have resorted to formulating policies on implementing open source for solving specific problems in their countries owing to the enormous benefits provided by F/OSS. However, F/OSS is not being adopted by the Government of India as much as it is being adopted worldwide. Adoption of F/OSS for a project in the government depends, to a large extent, on the dynamic abilities and interests of the government officers who are facing resistance towards adoption of the software. Therefore this research attempts to understand the various barriers that hinder the widespread adoption of Open Source Software in Central Government. One of the major barriers to adoption of F/OSS in Central Government offices of India revealed in this study is the lack of awareness of F/OSS. For different categories of F/OSS aware respondents, Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model is applied to identify the barriers according to different constructs. Results of the study for the F/OSS-aware respondents indicate their perception that F/OSS lacks in performance expectancy, effort expectancy and facilitating conditions. Almost all of these respondents do not perceive social influence creating any problem for adoption of F/OSS, although the F/OSS-aware user respondents do perceive the need of other organizations migrating to F/OSS first. The F/OSS-aware respondents belonging to IT departments are clearer than others on the specific issues related to F/OSS, apart from being more aware on F/OSS than others. The major governance archetype, the group of officers having IT decision rights, in Central Government offices has also been derived at and it is observed that the overall Governance performer are the senior officers. This category of officers taking major IT decisions, are found to be not fully aware of F/OSS thus impeding adoption of F/OSS. This study is useful for drawing the future path towards adoption of F/OSS in Central government offices. F/OSS is a global public resource and in order to exploit the opportunities provided by its use, a comprehensive policy is required to be formulated to overcome the barriers inhibiting F/OSS in India with efforts to promote awareness of F/OSS as the starting phase on a large scale. The different software models must be given sufficient space to co-exist and grow eventually leading to an interoperable and an open IT environment