FITIS National CxO Forum discusses Sri Lanka’s IT future
View(s):Policy makers and business leaders came together at the FITIS National CxO Forum 2019 last week to focus on Sri Lanka’s IT future and the increasing need to harness innovation and automation to help sustain businesses across the country in an ever disruptive world.
The forum which brought together an impressive line-up of local and international speakers including IT trailblazers was held under the patronage of Ajith P. Perera, Minister of digital infrastructure and information technology at Shangri-La Hotel, Colombo.
A large number of decision makers from the private sector as well as the government were present at the one day event where insights were shared to help Sri Lanka herald a new digital infrastructure era, a media release from FITIS said.
Delivering the welcome speech, FITIS Chairman Dr. Kithsiri Manchanayake said that the main objective of organising the forum was to feature important insights from leading industry personnel from around the world and forward-thinking disruptors, including IT and business leaders of innovative companies in the region to help Sri Lanka journey forward.
Chairman of the CxO Forum Organising Committee Prasad Hettiarachchi called on both private and government organisations to use the latest relevant technologies and leapfrog, instead of playing catch-up with technology that is a decade old and becoming outdated.
Known globally as a digital catalyst who has helped organisations accelerate their digital journey, internationally renowned Kay Lummitsch set the tone at the forum by delivering the keynote speech on the importance for local companies to adapt to digital. Speaking on the need to change the organisation’s culture, he said, “If we won’t change our organisation’s culture, we’ll never adapt to digital.”
Furthermore, Mr. Lummitsch also noted that the main difference from past leadership models to digital leadership roles is that digital leaders have to love people whereas past leaders were impelled to feel superior.
Speaking at the event, Minister Perera disclosed that the Cabinet had recently granted approval for the Digital Economy Strategy for Sri Lanka. “In order to accelerate the economic growth based on the digital technology, this strategy includes a three-part framework with digitisation of priority sectors in the economy, accelerating growth and improvement of digital sectors and building the required digital infrastructure,” he said.
Meanwhile, to also help realise the eGovernment objective, the Minister said that plans were afoot to bring the entire government under one umbrella. “We have an ambitious plan to bring the entire government under one umbrella, virtually sharing data among themselves by creating Sri Lanka’s ‘Population Registry’ – which we call the ‘mother of all databases’, which will have information of the entire population at databases centrally built and administered for all government ministries and departments to share data. It will end the isolated information use by different government bodies,” he said.
D.C. Dissanayake, Secretary to the Ministry of Digital Infrastructure and information technology said that with the knowledge services Industry in Sri Lanka poised to grow to US$5 billion by 2022, achieving this target will entail going up the value chain, new players emerging and the expansion of the IT workforce to enable the growth in the sector. “Staying true to our brand will become a challenge as we expand and the value placed on quality run the risk of getting diluted,” he warned.
The forum was supported by the Ministry of digital Infrastructure and Information Technology, the Sri Lanka Exports Development Board and Island of Ingenuity, while the national partner was the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka.