C-DAC Chennai has bagged a contract from UNDP-APDIP/IOSN for the South Asian -regional centre of UNDP-IOSN to be setup in CDAC, Chennai premises. This Agreement comes into effect from March 2006 and shall expire on June 2007.

The South Asia Node is expected to carry out the activities which include : managing an online community through a collaborative portal, mailing lists and chat channel; preparing/commissioning primers, case-studies and white papers and disseminating them widely; organizing events for knowledge exchange and skills transfer; conducting training and certification in partnership with local organizations; commissioning research on various domain specific issues; representing IOSN at various regional and international forums and providing policy advice to government bodies and donor agencies.

The South Asian node is expected to respond to the specific needs of the region. Towards this end the node should monitor strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for FOSS in the region. The node should also constantly watch for potential partners, projects and beneficiaries.

The node must also execute projects in a highly transparent manner in line with the principles of the Free/Open Source Software movement. Public “calls for applications” must be issued in order to recruit partners and collaborators. Public“calls for feedback” must be issued for all research outputs in order to keep them objective and balanced. Partners and collaborators should be encouraged to make monthly updates on project status to public mailing lists or blogs or public workspace. This would allow the FOSS community to freely participate, and thereby, multiply the impact of the sub-regional node.