BANGALORE: IT for the common man, was the theme of the first conference
inaugurated today as part of the BangaloreIT.COM. The conference is being held
in two parts. The first part held today saw five distinguished speakers discuss
various topics on this theme.
Douglas Alexander, UK minister of state, Trade & Industry, touched upon
the achievements of the British government with regard to bringing IT to the
masses. He congratulated the government for its efforts in adopting IT in
various ways. He said that though both the countries had made advancements in
this regard, they shouldn't get complacent and instead join hands to work
towards creating a seamless and global IT framework in times of converging
technologies.
Dr A Ravindran, chief additional secretary, enumerated the achievements of
the Karnataka government in computerizing the various departments. He
highlighted the fact that automation helped in simplifying processes and getting
the various services to the common man faster.
Dr N Seshagiri from NIC gave a brilliant demonstration of how pervasive IT
was being implemented in different parts of the country. He described the Varana
project in Maharashtra where 70 villages were linked, given access to the
Internet, and IT-enabled by means of content created in the regional language.
This project was funded mainly by the government. He went on to describe the
efforts by the people of 200 villages of Ahmed Nagar where funding was done by
the people themselves. Dr Seshagiri emphasized that technology was secondary to
the amazing interest and enthusiasm these villagers had shown in bringing IT
into their day-to-day lives. He also called upon the private sector to tap into
this enthusiasm. This would not only mean profits for them, but also great
development for the non-urban parts of the country, he said.
The conference also saw two speakers from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).
Their focus was on how technology is being used in education. Dr Mark Kamlet,
Provost, CMU, demonstrated how computer mediated tutoring and active learning
helped in far better comprehension as against traditional classroom methods. Dr
Paul S Goodman talked about how to create collaborative IT-based communities for
learning. He said that very often technology-based learning failed to achieve
desired results because they don’t factor in the human element into it.
The second session would be held on Friday and would see discussions on
e-governance and telemedicine.