FOSS Capacity Building is an important contribution of ICFOSS to Free Software. Currently, ICFOSS works with Students, Academic & Research Communities and Government agencies for capacity building. ICFOSS also works with groups that want to work towards incubation, by providing pre-incubation services.
- Student Activities
- Student Outreach Programme : ICFOSS provides technical training and handholding services to the student community through a set of programmes including FOSS Meets, FOSS Cells in selected institutions, support to selected student programmes in FOSS, and the FOSS Young Professional Award.
- Student Ambassador Programme: ICFOSS identifies Engineering students having interested in FOSS activities every year for familiarising innovative ideas in FOSS to the student community effectively. The selected Student Ambassadors form a vital link between the ICFOSS and students.
- Student Internship Programme: ICFOSS identifies young talent from among the engineering student community and provides advanced training and internship to them to nurture their ability and talent.
- Academic & Research Communities
- IDSARI (Information Delivery Systems for Academic and Research Institutions): This programme is targeted at non-Engineering colleges and research institutions, and provides training on a set of tools that would be of use in managing academic programmes.
- Training on Tools such as DSpace, Moodle and Open Journal Systems: Based on requests, ICFOSS carries out training on specific tools of relevance to Academic and Research communities such as Moodle, DSpace and OJS.
- Pre-incubation Services
ICFOSS has been providing pre-incubation support to companies from 2013. The main thrust of the support is in technical competencies and capacity building, but also includes space in the ICFOSS office when available. An estimated 50 companies have passed through this programme during 2013-15.
- FOSS Support to Govt Agencies
ICFOSS has been providing support to different Government agencies for different technology-related domains. These include:
- Kerala Assembly: ICFOSS provided support to the Kerala Legislative Assembly for transitioning to FOSS-based platforms for their internal text processing. The first phase of the transition was completed during 2014-15. Further support for a new workflow management is being considered.
- Inventory of Organic Farms (KAU, KSBB): ICFOSS is supporting Kerala Agriculture University and the Kerala State Biodiversity Board for technology development for pilot survey for a mobile-based data collection system (including geolocation and photographs) for building an inventory of organic farms. This project will be enhanced to make the data collected viewable and editable on the public network by the farmers themselves.
- Kudumbasree NRO: ICFOSS has been providing support to the Kudumbasree NRO teams for building of their beneficiary database in different states of the country.
- ASAP: ICFOSS conducted a study on Alternative computing devices for school students under the Additional Skill Acquisition Programme (ASAP) of Department of Education. A video based teaching quality evaluation system using network cameras was developed by ICFOSS for the quality department of ICFOSS.
- KSEB: ICFOSS is supporting KSEB in evaluating alternate computing devices like tablets to replace desktops in local offices.
- Kochi Municipal Corporation: ICFOSS supported Kochi Municipal Corporation in evaluating and implementing the vehicle tracking system using GPS modules.
- CDIT: ICFOSS has been assisting CDIT to make a transition to FOSS by providing training at different levels for different personnel of the organization.