Policy Updates
Bhavana Girase
Background
India is emerging as a global center for its vast digital user base and government initiatives, free and open source software (FOSS) innovation. India’s digital ecosystem is well deployed to use open-source technologies, with more than 96% of the 4G users accessing the Internet through open-source platforms such as Android. Recognizing this capacity, the Government of India (GOI) has actively promoted the adoption of open-source since 2015, notably through Openforge, an official platform for collaborative development of e-governance applications.
Under the Digital India program, the government aims to provide accessible, transparent and efficient digital services. However, challenges such as duplicated efforts, fragmented applications and lack of code sharing have hindered progress. Many government departments independently manufacture custom software, often rewriting the same functionality without reuse, causing inefficiency and higher costs.
To address this, OpenForge acts as a centralized repository managed by the Department of Electronics and IT, where the government source code is stored and shared. It promotes cooperation between government bodies, private organizations, developers and citizens, not only for the applications but also for the framework, API and dataset related to governance. By promoting transparency, rapid growth and cost savings, OpenForge intensifies innovation and improves the quality of India’s e-governance services.
Functioning
OpenForge serves as the cooperative development forum of the Government of India for e-governance software. The platform works by allowing various collaboration models, supporting various user roles, and hosting only the projects related to governance.
OpenForge is a safe, collaborative platform for e-governance development, which enables contribution to government, industry, academics and citizens. It uses Tuleap Suite and is hosted in NIC’s National Data Center.
Source: Government of India – OpenForge (openforge.gov.in).
It supports two primary cooperation models:
- Community for Community (G2C): Projects are made in public mode by government agencies or community members. These are open to contributions from anyone, subject to project administrator approval, and promote comprehensive citizen and private participation.
- Government for Government (G2G): Reserved for government agencies, this mode prohibits the reach of the project to approved government members. The case of a particular use allows departments to create private repositories only for internal use.
OpenForge users are classified based on their roles and access levels:
- Anonymous Users: Can browse public content without logging in.
- Registered Users: Can access public projects and request new ones to create.
- Project Members: Users registered with access to specific projects given by administrators.
- Project Administrators: Users who create and manage projects control membership and permissions.
The platform ensures that only governance-related software (application, API, dataset, library, etc.) is hosted. This accelerates development cycles, increases code transparency through peer reviews, and significantly reduces duplication and project costs by promoting reuse and remixing of existing code components.
Key Features
- A centralized repository for collecting, sharing and version-controlling source code.
- Rapidly tracked application development through reuse and remixing.
- Increases transparency, safety and quality through peer reviews.
- Free access to all software with use governed by a project-specific license.
- Ensuring strict attention to e-governance, public value and domain relevance.
Performance
- As of mid-September 2025, OpenForge hosts 3,751 projects in departments at all levels of the government, including a growing number of contributors of 16,677 users, including 228 new users and 49 new projects added during the period.
- The platform has seen more than 1.2 million git push with 42,041 pushes in the recent data, indicating high engagement and continuous development in hundreds of collaborative projects.
- Projects spread in all stages-125 alpha, 80 beta, 144 production/stable, and 39 mature, indicating that the platform supports both the use of digital solutions and full-scale deployment.
- Better efficiency through shared templates, code reuse, and promoting modular design. It also reduces the time of open- source development, repetition of effort, and overall costs, enabling rapid rollouts of e-governance applications.
- With peer reviews, the NIC releases trekking and hosting at the National Data Center, the OpenForge ensures better code quality, data sovereignty and compliance with open-source and safety standards.
- OpenForge supports major events such as Gem, Umang, and Digilocker, aligning with Digital India and Mety’s open-source policies, and contributes to the more open, skilled and innovative public digital ecosystem.
- OpenForge runs innovation and transparency in digital governance, which supports major Digital India platforms such as GeM, Umang and Digilocker. It reuses the code, reduces repetition, and encourages engagement through initiatives like public contests.
Impact
Provides important benefits, including Openforge:
- Cost Savings: By reusing code, redevelopment, cost cutting and maintenance overheads are avoided.
- Faster Implementation: Shared modules and templates that accelerate the rollout of new e-governance applications.
- Quality and Safety: Peer reviews and standardization software improve reliability and trust.
- Transparency and engagement: Open code enhances public visibility and community participation.
- Policy Alignment: Supports government mandates for open source, open API and digital sovereignty.
With hundreds of active projects at government levels, OpenForge reduced repetition, promoted innovation, and drove sustainable digital changes aligned with global open-source trends.
Emerging issues
Despite the strength, many emerging challenges affect the efficiency and capacity of OpenForge.
- Awareness and adoption intervals: Many government departments, especially in remote or low capacity areas, lack awareness, training and technical readiness to fully use the platform.
- Quality, Standard and Maintenance: Inconsistent coding practices, lack of applied standards, and limited resources limited to long-term maintenance of software quality and stability.
- Fragmented Development and Lack of Collaboration: Lack of coordination and incentives leads departments to create separate solutions instead of building together.
- Legal, licensing and data security concerns: Complications in open-source licensing, IP rights in agencies, and obstructing concerns over data secrecy and compliance, widespread participation and obstructing trust.
- Scalability, Interoperability and Monitoring Limits: Scale to infrastructure, ensure reusable modular design, and build effective monitoring and reaction systems.
Way Forward
To maximize the capacity of OpenForge and resolve its challenges, some recommendations are:
- To unlock the full capacity of Openforge, focus: Capacity Building and Awareness: Conduct workshops and develop technical skills through easy-to-follow guides at government levels to run open-sources adoption and use of effective platforms.
- Governance, quality and stability: Apply coding, safety and documentation standards through peer reviews, and set up teams dedicated to maintaining shared modules for long -term stability.
- Incentive, policy and legal support: Identify the contributors, embed collaboration in display metrics, ensure policy and budget banking, and provide clear guidance on licensing, IP and compliance.
- Monitoring, response and community engagement: Apply the analytics dashboard to reuse and track, assemble the user response to continuous improvement, and nurture a strong community through forums, documentation and events.
Conclusion
OpenForge represents a promising, potentially transformative platform for India’s e-governance landscape. By leveraging open source principles, collaboration, reuse, and transparency, it can reduce costs, improve quality, accelerate service delivery, and strengthen digital sovereignty. However, realizing its full potential demands concerted efforts around awareness, capacity building, institutional incentives, standardization, infrastructure, and sustained maintenance.
With the right governance, policy backing, and stakeholder engagement, OpenForge can evolve into a robust ecosystem that not only helps government agencies collaborate and avoid duplication but also nurtures a wider community of developers, civil society, and innovators who improve e‑governance applications for all.
References
1. Government of India. OpenForge. https://openforge.gov.in/.
2. Ministry of Electronics and IT. Policy on Collaborative Development by Opening Source Code. 2015, https://www.meity.gov.in/static/uploads/2024/03/Policy-Document.pdf.
3. Vikaspedia. OpenForge. https://egovernance.vikaspedia.in/viewcontent/e-governance/digital-india/openforge?lgn=en.
4. Press Information Bureau. MeitY Announces #FOSS4GOV Innovation Challenge. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1713452.
5. Ministry of Electronics and IT. Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software. 2024. https://www.meity.gov.in/static/uploads/2024/02/policy_on_adoption_of_oss.pdf.
6. Digital India Corporation. OpenForge. Digital India Corporation. https://dic.gov.in/openforge/.
About the Contributor
Bhavana Girase is a Research Intern at Impact and Policy Research Institute (IMPRI). A data and policy research enthusiast, with a background in UPSC preparation and focusing on turning complex data into interpretative insights for a better understanding of policies.
Acknowledgement
The author sincerely thanks Ms.Aasthaba Jadeja and the IMPRI team for their valuable support and guidance.
Disclaimer
All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organisation.
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