India & Sri Lanka expand IT cooperation

India says that it remains committed to offer all assistance related to Information Technology field to Sri Lanka, based on Sri Lanka’s priorities and requirements, a senior Indian cabinet minister said.

India's Minister of Law & Justice and Electronics and Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad who is currently visiting Sri Lanka from January 14-17 called on President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe last nigfht. He had detailed discussions on furthering bilateral cooperation in ICT sector with Hon. Harin Fernando, Minister of Telecommunication and Digital Infrastructure of Sri Lanka.
 
Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad noted India’s commitment to share the fruits of the ambitious Digital India programme with Government of Sri Lanka. He underlined the importance of digital inclusion, the need to use IT to uplift the people at the grassroot level, and the need for benefits of IT to percolate to the most needy.
 
An MoU for cooperation in IT & Electronics was signed between Hon’ble Ravi Shankar Prasad & Hon. Harin Fernando. The scope of MoU inter alia includes e-Governance, m-Governance, e-Public Services Delivery including e-learning, tele-medicine, cyber security etc.
 
According to a statement released by Indian High Commission in Colombo, a pilot programme on E-Office, an electronic platform developed by National Informatics Centre of India (NIC), which enables conduct of office procedures electronically was launched in Sri Lanka. The E-office platform is widely used in Govt. offices in India and has transformed the government functioning to a more efficient and transparent mode, removing the need for processing/storage of conventional paper files.
 
A knowledge partnership between National Knowledge Network (NKN) of India and Lanka Education And Research Network (LEARN) of Sri Lanka was also launched. This would enable secure and reliable connectivity between educational institutions of India and Sri Lanka under a Ultra High Bandwidth network. In one of its kind, several Universities in India and Sri Lanka were linked through a Digital Video Conference during the launch. Sri Lankan Universities would now be able to connect with Educational Institutions in Europe also through the network.
 
Top educational institutions in India & Sri Lanka are now connected through NKN such as IIT, Delhi, IISC, Bengaluru, JIPMER, Puducherry, MSU & MKU from India & Open University, Universities of Jayawardenapura, Ruhuna, Jaffna, Moratawa, Rajarata and Eastern University from Sri Lanka.