ICTA Private Sector Forum looks ahead with great hope for national development

The ICTA Private Sector Forum expressed great hopes for the future National ICT development. This was brought into focus at the ICTA Private Sector Forum meeting held at Cinnamon Grand Hotel, Colombo recently (on October 13, 2009).

True to its theme ‘ICTA Programmes- Progress and Opportunities Ahead’ and its tagline ‘Towards a knowledge economy’ the forum took time to review the past year’s activities and consider the future involvement of the ICTA Private Sector Forum in national ICT development.

While ICTA Chairman Professor P. W. Epasinghe welcomed the participants, the review of the past year’s activities and plans for the future of the ICTA Private Sector Forum was presented by ICTA Re-Engineering Government Programme Head Dinuka Perera and the presentation on recent four ICTA-initiated ICT surveys - ICT Industry Survey, IT Work Force Survey, BPO Work Force Survey and ICT Usage in Business and the on “the ICTA Private Sector Program- Progress and Impact” were given by ICTA ICT Investment and Private Sector Development Programme Head Fayaz Hudah.

The audience was also given an overview of the IT-BPO career fairs by the presentation given by Indaka Raigama of the Regional Career Fair Committee. An important highlight of the meeting was the presentation by ICTA COO Reshan Dewapura which underlined what is in store for the people of Asia in e-Asia 2009 and gave a detailed update on the work done in preparation for e-Asia 2009 under the theme “e-Asia 2009 – Opportunities to engage”.

Representing the Ministry of Education which had done a great service for popularising the IT-BPO programme among school children, teachers and parents Director of ICT Division, Ministry of Education, Neil Gunadasa recapitulated the IT-BPO work with relevance to school children done from the NICS conference at BMICH Colombo in 2007 and thanked ICTA and the private sector for their contribution for the success in the endeavour.

The presentations were followed by valuable suggestions from the audience. A significant proposal was that Sri Lanka be represented as a country in important world ICT business promotion arenas.

At the end of the session four counters were kept open at the Oak room of the hotel for a while to give an opportunity for participants to interact with (1) ICTA in connection with e-Asia 2009 including booking of stalls at the e-Asia 2009 exhibition, (2) Messrs. MG Consultants (Pvt.) Ltd. and (3) Green Tech Consultants (Pvt.) Ltd. and (4) IT-BPO Career Fairs with their valuable suggestions / contributions.