SCOSTA is the Indian Smart Card

Smart card

A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card , is any pocket-sized card with embedded integrated circuits. A smart card or microprocessor cards contain volatile memory and microprocessor components. The card is made of plastic, generally polyvinyl chloride, but sometimes acrylonitrile...

 Operating System

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

 Standard for Transport Application evolved during 2002-2003, initially to cater to the need of Driving License and RC applications. It is truly open standard

Open standard

An open standard is a standard that is publicly available and has various rights to use associated with it, and may also have various properties of how it was designed . There is no single definition and interpretations vary with usage....

. It was evolved as a result of several man-months efforts of a dedicated team consisting of experts from National Informatics Centre

National Informatics Centre

The National Informatics Centre ' is the main science & technology organisation of India's Union Government in informatics services and information-and-communication- technology applications...

 (Government of India), IIT Kanpur

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur is a Central deemed University located in Uttar Pradesh, about 15 km north-west of the city of Kanpur in the Kalyanpur suburb....

 and Indian Smart Card Industry representatives. SCOSTA is currently owned and maintained by National Informatics Center, Government of India.

Features

Salient features of SCOSTA include:

• A truly open standard for Smart Card OS.
• Owned and maintained by National Informatics Center, Government of India.
• No patent
  Patent
  A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
  
   or royalty
  Royalties
  Royalties are usage-based payments made by one party to another for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property...
  
   issues.
• Based on international standards ISO 7816 for smart cards.
• Open issues are plugged, fully implement ready.
• Is uniformly applicable for all ID base project requirements.

Uses

SCOSTA has been used for following Indian e-Governence Projects:

• National ID Card
• ePassport
• Driving License
• Vehicle RC
• Rural Health Insurance Card
• Rural Employment Guarantee Card
• Public Distribution System
  Public Distribution System
  Public Distribution System is an Indian food security system. Established by the Government of India under Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food, and Public Distribution and managed jointly with state governments in India, it distributes subsidised food and non-food items to India's poor...
  
  

SCOSTA-CL is the latest version of SCOSTA keeping in mind the requirements of contact and contact less based smart card projects.