Vision Group calls for deeper IT penetration

The Karnataka IT Vision Group, which met for the first time on Monday in Bangalore under the leadership of N R Narayana Murthy, has urged all the stakeholders concerned to increase the IT talent pool, enhance computer literacy, and widen the IT penetration particularly in government schools.

The Vision Group meeting was attended by a host of IT honchos including IBM India MD Shankar Annaswamy, Microsoft's Ravi Venkatesan, Cisco India's R Devarajan, Indian Semiconductor Association head Rajendra Khare, Professor Sadagopan of IIIT-B and Lakshman Badiga of Wipro.

On the government side, the meeting was attended by IT&BT secretary M N Vidyashankar, STPI (Karnataka) director B V Naidu besides other officials.

The Group felt that Bangalore, being a globally recognised IT brand, has to set benchmark itself against global standards. "For this purpose, it is essential to give thrust to the steps for increasing talent pool as well as set up efforts in e-governance," a government official noted.

Speaking during the meeting, Narayana Murthy said that the focus should be on increasing computer literacy at the primary and secondary school levels. He opined that if India and Karnataka, in particular, has to maintain the pre-eminent position in the IT sector, top most priority will have to be assigned to primary and secondary education.

"There is a need for synergy between the industry, academia and government, particularly on increasing the talent pool for the knowledge sector. The state programmes such as Mahithi Sindhu and Yuva.com are steps in that direction," Murthy said.

The Vision Group also suggested that e-governance should become more relevant for faster delivery of government services to the citizens in a transparent manner. "E-governance initiatives in all citizen centric departments, must be speeded up. These initiatives will go a long way in enhancing the public image of the service providers," officials highlighted.

The Committee was apprised of the number of reports of UNDP, World Bank, etc, which cover e-governance readiness of the different states in the country.

"The comparative study would help the Vision Group on knowing the present status of e-governance readiness and the ways and means of encashing them for achieving higher levels of efficiency," the official detailed.

The Vision Group members also requested the Department of IT&BT to provide a series of baseline figures such as number of school student per PC, number of government employees per PC and other related data which will not only give the present score card but will also help the Vision Group in providing useful inputs in enhancing the penetration of PCs at the school and the government levels.