Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 15 : The Kerala government has adopted free and open source software (FOSS) for the state education department and for e-governance.

The curriculum department Saturday has also recommended extension of FOSS to higher secondary schools.

The implementation of this has been entrusted to the IT@school Project, a mission mode agency under the state's general education department.

Information Technology was made a part of high school curriculum in Kerala in 2003 when IT was made a compulsory subject for Class 8.

"The higher secondary sector is using software like Visual Basic, MS office package, Tally in the computer science and commerce streams. With the new curriculum committee decision, the entire higher secondary section will now changeover to FOSS," said Anvar Sadath, executive director, IT@school.

"Training for teachers in FOSS and development of various software tools to supplement the existing proprietary software will commence from December 2009," he said.

The state's general education department will be the only agency in India to make its e-governance fully on FOSS, he said.

IT@school Project was in the news recently for saving a minimum of Rs.11 crore in purchase of software after it adopted FOSS.

"The FOSS implementation implies the values of sharing and stands for the true value of freedom which enables the user to copy, modify, share, study it and use it on requirement without any restriction," added Sadath. (ians)