The following was announced Jan 9, 2007 at the GITEX Conference in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India:
The Institute for Electronic Governance of Andra Pradesh, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California State University system announced today a joint effort to consolidate growing support across their communities of practice for the interoperability specifications developed by the MIT Open Knowledge Initiative (O.K.I.). This collaborative effort will promote the use of O.K.I.’s Open Service Interface Definitions (OSIDs) and other critical standards to raise the level of interoperability among the components of information systems used in education, government services and other applications.
Interoperability determines the ease and convenience with which everyday users can use a combination of software products together. Greater interoperability also makes it easier to assemble and maintain systems, lowering development cost and increasing the speed of integrating new products and services in response to technology trends.
The O.K.I. OSIDs increase interoperability by defining the interfaces between various parts of a system so that components can be assembled or changed more readily. This allows systems to evolve more easily and quickly because components can be upgraded and new components can be integrated with less programming effort.
"We are very pleased that IEG and CSU will leverage the extensive O.K.I. efforts on building out their service oriented infrastructure. MIT's plans for implementing a 21st century environment for education and research critically depends on achieving a high level of interoperability between enterprise applications, academic software and MIT's infrastructure software," said Wilson D’Souza, Director of Infrastructure Software Development and Architecture at MIT.
"Improving quality and expanding availability are keys to increasing educational opportunity world-wide. Through the interoperability and integration that the O.K.I. OSIDs make possible, many applications related to the MIT educational experience - as well as others - can be usefully shared by an international community of institutions and individuals,” added Vijay Kumar, Senior Associate Dean & Director, Office of Educational Innovation and Technology for MIT's Office of the Dean for Undergraduate Education.
"For the CSU to provide high quality, personalized educational services to our 22,000 faculty and 400,000 students at an affordable cost, we need scalable customizations of technology services. The O.K.I. OSIDs in a services oriented architecture is a critical innovation we are pursuing to fulfill this need,” said Gerry Hanley, Senior Director, Academic Technology Services for The California State University Chancellor’s Office.
Today’s announcement also marks an important step in diversification for O.K.I. in applying its interoperability specifications in new application domains. While OSID related development previously has focused almost entirely on educational technology, the Institute for Electronic Governance, an institute of the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, is taking the lead in extending the interoperability benefits of OSIDs to applications for electronic government.
"O.K.I.'s commitment to service oriented architectures and the standards for design and development that the OSIDs provide are crucial in the implementation of policies for delivering very large scale government services. The Institute for Electronic Governance (IEG) is committed to bringing over 95% of the government services online. That mission includes bringing together over 40 major departments including agriculture, health care, civil supplies, municipal administration, technical education, social welfare, revenue, housing, etc. The O.K.I consortium not only provides us a strong base for such an effort, but also generates a stream of research topics that stimulates the students and the faculty of IEG's partner institutions and raises the level of their technical training and research," said Amarnath Reddy Atmakuri, Executive Director of the Institute for Electronic Governance, Government of Andhra Pradesh.
"The development challenges of very large scale systems and the marketplace opportunities that SOAs and OSIDs promise will unite the Indian government and world-wide business interests in collaborative projects to produce the kind of innovative products and services that are required to overcome the challenges and realize the opportunities that interoperability provides. We look forward to a long and fruitful collaboration with our partners," said Prof. Subbarao Ghanta, President of the Institute for Electronic Governance, Government of Andhra Pradesh.
For further information, contact Jeff Merriman, Executive Director, at merriman@mit.edu.
For more information about the O.K.I. Project visit the web site at http://www.okiproject.org/
About the CSU
The California State University is the largest system of senior higher education in the country, with 23 campuses, approximately 405,000 students and 44,000 faculty and staff. Since the system was created in 1961, it has awarded nearly 2.5 million degrees, about 84,000 annually. The CSU is renowned for the quality of its teaching and for the job-ready graduates it produces. Its mission is to provide high-quality, affordable education to meet the ever-changing needs of the people of California. With its commitment to excellence, diversity and innovation, the CSU is the university system that is working for California. See www.calstate.edu
About the IEG
IEG's objective is to forge a seamless connection between people, government, academia and industry to attain a prosperous and eco-conscious knowledge society of skilled and empowered people.
The Institute for Electronic Governance (IEG) is a non-profit organization under the Department of Information Technology and Communication (IT & C), Government of Andhra Pradesh. It offers quality human resource and services to the IT Industry and Government and in the process of doing so, bridges the gap between Government <-> University <-> Industry. IEG is an institutional mechanism that is working in collaboration with the National Institute for Smart Government (NISG), the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), a Consortium of Institution of Higher Learning (CIHL), the Informational Technology & Communication Department (IT&C), Higher/Technical Education Departments (HE/TE) & Educational institutions.
IEG employs over 1700 IT professionals to deliver outstanding results in e-Governance. IEG is a technical solution & human resource provider for over 30 Government departments. As a result-driven organization, IEG sows the seeds of success in the people by providing them with the right training and tools to sharpen their personal and professional skill.
About MIT
The mission of MIT is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
MIT’s Open Knowledge Initiative (O.K.I) develops and promotes specifications that describe how the components of a software environment communicate with each other and with other enterprise systems.
Open Knowledge Initiative
http://plectrudis.mit.edu/okicommunity/article.php/20070110003720716