Dear Colleagues,
Below is President Dr Abdul Kalami’s speech when inaugurating
the first commonwealth connects International ePartnership
Kindest Regards
Harry
|
PRESIDENTS ADDRESS AT THE INAUGURATION OF
COMMONWEALTH CONNECTS: INTERNATIONAL E-PARTNERSHIP |
|
|
|
|
|
Following is the text of
the President Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalami’s Address I am indeed delighted to participate in the inauguration
of Commonwealth Connects: International e-Partnership Broadband economy for prosperity The telecom revolution in Bandwidth is demolisher of imbalance: The
bandwidth is the demolisher of imbalances and a great leveler in the
knowledge society. Making the bandwidth available is like the Government
laying the roads. Movement of materials through these roads creates wealth in
the industrial economy and the government recovers more than the investment
on the roads by way of taxes and enhanced prosperity to its people. In the
modern digital economy driven by knowledge products, bits and bytes traverse
the network and create wealth and this will recover the cost of investments
in the bandwidth. Thus, a singular action of making the bandwidth available
to all our people will bridge the perceived divide. The free bandwidth will
make economic sense if we appropriately cost the services offered using the
bandwidth. We have the fiber infrastructure ready up to block level, last
mile wireless technologies are being implemented and the VSAT technologies
for the unreachable are in place in the form of Satellite services. Hence, we
are well on course to bridge the digital gap. We are in the midst of
convergence of digital technologies. The total installed bandwidth capacity in Empowerment through Connectivity The total land area of In the proposed model, the inter-connectivity among the
three sectors of the economy is brought about by four grids: namely,
Knowledge Grid, Health Grid, e-Governance Grid and the Rural Grid,. Each grid
is a system of multiple portals. This system of grid will bring prosperity to
700 million people in the rural areas and 300 million plus people in the
urban areas. In the process, it will ensure that the lives of 220 million
people are transformed from below the poverty line. First let me discuss
about knowledge grid. Knowledge Grid The endeavor is indeed to build and transform an information
society into a knowledge society. The knowledge society will be a society
producing, marketing and using products and services that are rich in both
explicit and tacit knowledge, thus creating value-added products for national
and international consumption. In the knowledge economy, the objective of a
society changes from fulfilling the basic needs of all-round development to
empowerment. The education system instead of going by textbook teaching will
be promoted by creative, interactive self learning ? formal and informal with
focus on values, merit and quality. The workers instead of being skilled or
semi-skilled will be knowledgeable, self- empowered and flexibly skilled. We
have rich knowledge institutions but what we have to add is connectivity.
This connectivity today is technologically possible but would need creation
of high bandwidth reliable network infrastructure to the extent of minimum 10
Gigabits per second all through the country to provide uniform access of
knowledge in different regions leading to the creation of Knowledge GRID.
Now, I would like to discuss on establishing the next network in the system
of GRIDs across the country, namely Health Grid. Health Grid The mission of telemedicine with healthcare Grid is
gaining momentum and it will spread to all the equipped Primary Health
Centres in the country, medical colleges and research institutions.
Connectivity between 35 urban super-specialty hospitals with 165 remotely
located Healthcare Centres has been established through Indian Space Research
Organisation (ISRO) telemedicine grid. This will enable unique case studies
and experiences to be exchanged between the super specialists through this
health grid. It will also be possible to conduct Conferences of specialist
doctors from multi centers to discuss the critical disease patterns and
provide treatment. Now I would like to take up e-Governance Grid. Connectivity for E-Governance Good governance is being recognized as an important goal
by many countries across the world. They have taken up specific initiatives
for open and transparent governance. Freedom of information is being
redefined and supported by detailed guidelines. The internet revolution has
proved to be a powerful tool for good governance initiatives. An important
dimension of the internet potential is the possibility of providing services
any time anywhere. Along with this there is a conscious effort to put the
citizen as the centre of focus of the governance. Citizens are being
perceived as customers and clients. E-governance has to be citizen friendly.
Delivery of services to citizens is considered as a primary function of the
government. Particularly in a democratic nation of a billion people like Typical scenario: I
visualize an election scenario, where a candidate files his nomination from a
particular constituency. Immediately the election officer verifies his/her
authenticity from the national citizen ID database through multifactor
authentication, through a multipurpose Citizen ID card. The education credentials of the candidate come from the
university records. Candidate’s track record of employment comes from
various employers with whom the candidate had worked. His or her income and
wealth resources come from the income-tax department, and other sources.
Candidate’s property record comes from the registration of land
authority across the country. Candidate’s credit history comes form
various credit institutions like banks. Candidate’s civic consciousness
and citizenship behaviour comes from the police crime record. Candidate’s legal track records come from the
judicial system. All the details arrive at the computer terminal of the
election officer within few seconds automatically by the act of e-Governance
software agents which crawls across the various state and central government
web services directories through the network GRID and collects the
information automatically and presents the facts in real-time without any
bias. Artificial intelligence software analyses the credentials of the
candidate and gives a rating on how successful he or she will be as a
politician. Election officer sitting at the remote block of the country
decides on the spot and the election process starts. All the voters vote from
their home through virtual polling booths. If we consider the breakthroughs
and expansion in telecommunication and internet in the last five years, this
visualization is no longer a dream and is possible to be achieved by many
nations. To establish a system what I have visualized, we need a
high bandwidth broadband connectivity across the many Government departments
such as State and District Administration, Election commission, Universities,
Banks, Home/Police Departments, Insurance companies etc., This scenario
requires vertical and horizontal e-Governance grid established across various
institutions and the Government. Hence, we can draw information and feed
information from these GRIDs for seamless flow of data to achieve the goal of
good governance. Now let me discuss the significance of the sustainable
development through establishing Rural Grid. Rural Grid We have so far discussed all the four connectivities at
the national level required for the societal transformation leading to
empowerment. Now, I would like to share with you the experience of
establishing a Pan African e-Network for providing connectivity among 53
African nations. Pan African e-Network During the year 2003-04, I visited African countries such
as The Pan-African e-Network project is estimated to cost
around US$100 million. As part of the project 12 universities (7 from India
and 5 from Africa), 17 Super Specialty Hospitals (12 from India and 5 from
Africa), 53 tele-medicine centers and 53 tele-education centres in Africa
will be connected. The pilot project on tele-education and tele-medicine in RB Multimedia Studio Now, I would like to share with you another experience
when I delivered 2006 Phillip Tobias Lecture on 27th September 2006 from
Rashtrapati Bhavan Multimedia studio using Multimedia tele-conferencing.
After the lecture, I was interacting with Prof Tobias and his team at I am sure many Commonwealth countries participating in
today?s summit have several experiences to share and Commonwealth connects
programme can formulate a plan to integrate the core-competence of nations
for mutual benefit. This power of networking can definitely be used by
Commonwealth countries for sharing their core competencies and building a
knowledge platform for serving the development aspirations of the individual
nations through collective wisdom. Suggestions I would like to give few suggestions for the consideration
of the Commonwealth Connects 2007: International e-Partnership
3. Modernizing education through state of the art skill
development programmes among the Commonwealth nations leading to skill
certification and acceptance among the countries for global employment
opportunities. 4. Undertaking study of e-governance implementations
across the Commonwealth nations and suggest the best practices for the G2G
and G2C implementations. 5. Creating a mechanism which will facilitate pooling of
core competence of nations for developing knowledge products and systems for
serving the global market in education, healthcare and e- governance. 7. Creating a Commonwealth Connects Fund and Institute a
Commonwealth committee to address the above mentioned suggestions. Conclusion The 53 countries of Commonwealth constitute a population
of 2 billion i.e. one third of the population of the Planet. This network of
independent nations in the past has taken up many initiatives for
interconnecting their heritage in art, culture, science and technology,
history, sports and way of living. Such a strong base of relationship and the
core competence of the countries can be further integrated into a very useful
partnership by providing connectivity through the Evolution of a Commonwealth
Knowledge Grid. This can address many common challenges for development such
as developing a knowledge society through quality education, providing
affordable quality healthcare to all, sustainable rural development through
cluster approach, providing transparent people-friendly- With these words, I inaugurate the Commonwealth Connects:
International e-Partnership |