Mr. Reshan Dewapura -
COO -ICTA |
|
Sri Lanka is well known around the world for best quality tea, gems, sunny sandy beaches etc , But We are still making our way of becoming a hub of the region in Information technology and Business Process Outsourcing & IT enabled services. These industries are booming in the Asia Pacific region and it shows quite a large potential in growing up to become one of the main revenue generation mediums in the country. Countries like India, Vietnam have taken significant advantages by implementing the infrastructure and the social initiatives to develop these industries.
His Excellency the President Mahinda Rajapakse quite rightly recognized the importance of expanding the Information and Communication Technology capabilities in the country. There have been a lot of initiatives for the past few years to boost the ICT literacy of the country and to develop the Technology infrastructure to maintain a wider accessibility to technology. To accelerate the development of the ICT sector in the country His Excellency the President has declared this year as the year of ICT & English.
We had the opportunity to speak to Mr. Reshan Dewapura, The Chief Operating Officer of the Information & Communication Technology Agency (ICTA), the apex body for information technology in Sri Lanka. The Road Map of the ICT year was discussed in detail and we share the important points.
The specially appointed presidential task force which consists of the specialists in the industry from both the public and private sectors is steering the whole project while other partners like the ICT Agency support the initiative with their own resources and activities.
The key focus of the ICT year is to make the general public aware of the opportunities and the capabilities of Information & Communication Technology sector, increasing their ICT literacy rate and ultimately put in place a plan to ensure Sri Lanka has sufficient ICT resources to take the country to the next level on ICT led development, said Mr. Dewapura. According to the latest statistics available Sri Lankan ICT literacy rate has been improving in the last three to four years period from 5% to 16% as of 2006/2007. With the amount of projects carried out in the past 18 months this figure should have improved at least up to 25% as of now, which seems to be a great achievement, compared to other countries in his region. We need to keep working towards achieving 60%- 70% within a certain number of years. Mr. Reshan Dewapura strongly believes that we should be able to enjoy the benefits of the increased ICT literacy by end of 2010 with the initiatives taken 2009. In some cases it's not possible to see the results within this year but we should keep the momentum going for another 2-4 years, by which time we should be able to see the realization of the investments made during this period of time, added Mr. Dewapura.
Creating ICT awareness in the country is a lengthy exercise. We need to educate one whole generation about the importance of learning information and communication technology and following ICT as a career. The benefits and effectiveness of ICT and the demand for IT professional is still not fully apparent to the general public. Lots of parents encourage their children to become doctors, engineers, lawyers etc, but very few people encourage them to become an IT professional. The reason behind this is the lack of knowledge on the opportunities of ICT and of the new avenues available for younger generation to buildup their careers. Information and communication technology has become the pathway of most of the advancements in other professions as well. In that sense the younger generation can get involved in most of the innovative technology and revenue generation for the country which will intern help to boost the economy of the country.
There are also ample opportunities available in the ICT field for people to work overseas in developed countries which will allow them to earn a very good remuneration and remit foreign exchange to the country. That will also be one major component of the country's economy.
The presidential task force for the year of ICT and English is headed by Minister, Dr. Sarath Amunugama. Coordination of the IT segment of the Task force is spearheaded by Mr. Ranjith Fernando, a well known public and private sector figure and the English segment is coordinated by Mr. Sunimal Fernando, Advisor to H.E. the President. The task force consists of the following five subcommittees: Development of Course content, teacher training, mobilizing the Private Sector, Improving the private education institutes, Development of north and east in the country. These sub-committees consists the industry experts from both the public and private sectors. The key focus of theses subcommittee is to increase the IT & English literacy rate of the Country. There are other ICT related organizations who are working with the task force, and in addition they have their own activities designed to be implemented aligned to the year of ICT.
Information & Communication Technology Agency as the apex body of the ICT in Sri Lanka assists the task force in implementing their tasks and apart from that there will be several ICT activities planned by ICTA in addition to the work that they do normally. There will be one major activity every month organized by ICTA during the year of ICT.
Ministry of Education, Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has also embarked in several activities with the task force and various other ICT activities are on the cards, organized by ICT organizations. The calendar of the events will be published to the general public for their awareness. There will be a website dedicated to Year of ICT and English.
The ICT Agency will be looking to launch several e-Government projects which will be completed during the year. There will be several infrastructure related activities also kick starting this year. ICTA will join hands with TRCSL in implementing a nationwide broadband backbone. This will boost the accessibility to public networks like internet and will hopefully reduce the cost involved in establishing and maintaining the broadband connections for the general public. There will be an initiative to start implementing four hundred more "Nenasalas" in the country this year in addition to the six hundred already established. Even though it's impossible to implement all four hundred during 2009, ICTA is planning to implement at least 100 - 150 "Nenasalas" during the year.
Government Infrastructure projects like Lanka Government Network (LGN) which connects the government institutes like Ministries, Departments, Provincial Councils, District and Divisional Secretariats will also see phase 2 of the project being implemented and hopefully completed during the year. This will allow these organizations to interchange information and provide a platform to offer citizen services accurately, efficiently and quickly. This network will enable services like Voice over IP (VOIP) between government bodies which will significantly minimize the cost of communication between them. LGN will also be the infrastructure backbone that all automated e-government services will use. The First Phase of this project is already completed and there are 325 institutes successfully connected using LGN. There will be another 150 to 200 connected during the Second Phase of the project. Apart from that Lanka Government Network also has the capacity to increase the bandwidth to facilitate video conferencing between government institutes if the need arises. This also will make huge cost saving by minimizing the cost of transportation and by facilitating effective time management for the government officers.
The other major infrastructure related project is the Lanka Gate. This will act as the country portal which will allow the citizens of the country to gain access to e-services using a single sign on feature, and will also allow them to make payments to governments and use any other services of the government which are automated. Another part of Lanka Gate is the Lanka Interoperability Exchange. (LIOX) which follows open standards and open protocols, and will allow the plugging in of e-government as well as non government e-services in order to access them seamlessly. We are very well positioned to be the IT hubs of the region with all these implementations in place. Even some of the developed countries are still on their way to automate some of their government services. As Sri Lankans we can be proud of the ICT sector achievements in the country.
|
E-mail