The OpenForge platform is built to promote the sharing and reuse of e-governance application source code. In 2015, the Ministry of Electronics & IT, Government of India, rolled out the “policy on collaborative application development by opening the source code of government applications,” which provides a framework for archiving government custom-developed source code in repositories and opening these repositories for promoting reuse, sharing, and remixing.

By opening the source code, the government wants to encourage collaborative development between government departments/agencies and private organisations, citizens, and developers to spur the creation of innovative e-governance applications and services.