Business Software Alliance (BSA) capacity building program for Karnataka PSUs

BANGALORE, INDIA: Business Software Alliance (BSA), in partnership with the Center of E-Governance, Government of Karnataka, announced the closure of the program “Relevance of Software Asset Management (SAM) for Public Sector Undertakings”, effectively training 10 state owned enterprises on the business benefits of adopting good and robust IT Governance practices. The program was concluded today with a ceremony in Bangalore, making Karnataka the only state in India to have engaged PSUs on the principles of Software Asset Management.

M.N. Vidyashankar, principal secretary, IT and E-Governance, Government of Karnataka said: “PSU’s play an important role in providing critical products and services to citizens, hence, it is important that they are educated and trained on optimization and proper deployment of software assets which are a critical tool for production and citizen transactions. This will protect PSUs from tangible risks such as security breaches, system breakdowns and liabilities associated with usage and deployment of illegal software. Karnataka is a leading state in the usage of IT and we are extremely pleased that we have also led the way for PSU’s to avail the full benefits of the internationally recognized ISO Standard of Software Asset Management.”

Lizum Mishra, director, BSA, shared her experience about working with the state PSUs: “The core objective of this program was to ensure that Karnataka state owned enterprises understand the importance of software in their everyday functioning and are able to better manage their software assets to stay competitive, secure and productive. We have been fortunate to get the Center of E-Governance, Government of Karnataka’s undivided support in this initiative and are certain that the learnings will enable state PSUs to use the benefits from these trainings to perform efficiently and create significant cost savings on software as well as IT processes and infrastructure.”

VK Shetty, MD, Karnataka Fisheries Development Corp. Ltd, said: “We are privileged to have been given the opportunity to able to participate and complete this program. Participation by our organization in this initiative led by Center of E-Governance, Government of Karnataka and Business Software Alliance shows our commitment towards adopting best practices in organizational compliance and we recognize that software is a critical aspect of this process. We are certain that through the adoption of these principles into our operational lifecycle, we will aim towards continuous compliance, procurement-cost management and risk reduction.”

The program was aimed to train State based PSUs in Karnataka on the principles of the internationally recognized ISO Standard of Software Asset Management (SAM), its salient features and its core business benefits to government organizations. These principles involve building capabilities on optimizing the purchase, deployment, maintenance, utilization, and disposal of software applications within an organization, reducing information technology (IT) costs and limit business and legal risk related to the ownership and use of software, while maximizing IT responsiveness and end-user productivity.