The Open Source Software division (OSSD) contributes to creation of a supportive ecosystem for FOSS in India through relevant activities. It functions as a resource centre in this strategically important area of software technology, hosting portals, offering educational programs and developing significant open source software. The focus areas of the division are Accessibility, Health Care, Localisation and E-learning. We carry out research and development in these areas to provide effective solutions. We develop systems for physically challenged in the area of Accessibility, provide various health solutions to the healthcare providers, develop tools that will aid the process of localisation and translation of applications, and develop solutions in different areas of e-Learning in collaboration with the Education Technology Unit (ETU).
Some of the development activities include:
- Anumaan – a predictive text entry system for people with writing disability
- SuTra – An Intelligent Suggestive Translator for Localisation
- e-Svaasthya – An open source Hospital Information System for India
- Enhancing accessibility for FOSS Desktops – this project aims at making the Linux Desktops usable by the differently abled people like the Blind, people with motor disability, people with memory problems, etc.
- Development of knowledge bank repository for scientific/education/e-Governance applications
- Marathi Tutor - A constructive learning environment for learning Marathi, done in collaboration with ETU
- Subjective Evaluation Framework – a tool providing a framework for subjective evaluation in universities, done in collaboration with ETU.
- RE portal – a platform which will aid reinventing the current education process in India. This project is done for IBM.
- Shiksha portal – a platform developed for collaboration among teachers all over India, currently being used by the CII foundation to promote teacher collaboration.
- Drishti – An EMR solution for Ophthalmology, a system developed for Sankara Eye Hospital
- Student portal – a platform where teachers/ industry players can put their ideas which students can take up to implement and give back to the open source community
- Innovation Portal
The group also works on spreading awareness of these areas and Open Source technology. One of the mandates of OSSD is to promote the use of Free/Open Source software (FOSS) in the country.