National initiative to nurture digital technology awareness in Southern region
View(s):The Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) together with the Ministry of Technology, Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (TRCSL), telecommunications partners and industry partners recently launched a two-day national forum to create awareness about the national digital transformation agenda, which also engages regional partners.
The Southern Region Roadshow was the second of the five regional cluster development programmes commenced by ICTA. The first Regional Development Roadshow was organised in June focusing on the Northern Region. There will be three more Roadshows in the Western, Eastern, and Central Regions scheduled to unfold in the next few months, ICTA said in a media release.
The Southern Roadshow was attended virtually by the participants connecting over 500 government officials representing five districts in the Southern Region – Galle, Matara, Hambantota, Monaragala and Rathnapura. This initiative focuses on collaborating with stakeholders in the Southern Region such as government agencies, industries, SME sector working in agriculture and education to introduce new and advanced technologies via local and international experts, providing necessary infrastructure for new technological research and development.
The main Stakeholder Engagement forum on August 20 was attended by over 350 online participants, which was parallelly interpreted into Sinhala, Tamil, and sign languages to ensure a broader reach to a larger audience. The Government Forum on August 21 was conducted with an online presence of over 200 participants and staff from the South. District Secretaries of the Galle, Matara, Hambantota, Monaragala and Rathnapura joined the dialogue from the district offices, ICTA said.
Ministry of Technology Secretary Jayantha De Silva commenting on this initiative stated that the Ministry has taken steps to ensure efficiency in facilitating and delivering the services to the public. He added that it is only a matter of putting resources together to uplift Sri Lanka to achieve developed status. “With the strength and resources, we have we are determined to bring technology into the right place,” he added.
Chairman of ICTA and Director General of Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (TRC) Oshada Senanayake, stated, “ICTA being the catalysing agent as well as the accelerator, will also become the catalyst and enabler of all the government institutes of the country. ICTA has taken the pragmatic steps with the vision to make a digitally transformed Sri Lanka by three basic verticals which are Digital Government, Digital Economy and Perspective of Digital services”.
Chief Digital Economy Officer of ICTA, Anura De Alwis said that their target is to achieve $3 billion exports by 2024. To make that a reality the country will need 300,000 workers (in this sector), while the current number stands at approximately 175,000. The focus has been on service engineering in the last few decades, while product building is the key for global conquest. A product is the best way to secure more IPs, revenue and FDI. He also added that there was a great response from the Northern cluster after the first Roadshow in June and initiatives are in place for certain key developments such as IOT labs, innovation centres and also the tier two of the techno park, which is a centre of business in Jaffna.