The IET Sri Lanka Network has formulated the Sri Lanka Strategic Roadmap
The draft document was circulated among all stakeholders in 2018 seeking feedback for which a significant amount of feedback was received by IET. Subsequently, the feedback was incorporated in to the draft document and as the next step a stakeholder consultative meeting with the Chairmanship of Hon Minister Ajith P Perera, Minister of Digital In frastructure and Information Technology was held on 22nd March 2019 from 9.30 – 11.30 am at the Lounge of Institution of Engineers Sri Lanka.
Together with the Hon Minister, Secretary to the Ministry also attended the meeting with other Ministry officials and IET Sri Lanka Network office bearers. There were over 40 stakeholders present and 9 of them presented further verbal feedback.
IET Sri Lanka Network, together with the Ministry of Telecommunication and Digital Infrastructure launched the National Strategic Roadmap on IoT under the patronage of Mr Ranil Wickramasinghe, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka on 7th August 2019 at BMICH.
The Priminister has presented the mementoes to the IoT Roadmap Development Team, Eng. (Dr.) Narendra De Silva, Eng. (Dr.) Chandana Gamage, Eng. (Dr.) Chathura De Silva, Eng. Dammika Nanayakkara, Eng. Rohan Seneviratne, Eng. (Dr.) Lalith Liyanage, and Eng. Rukmal Jayasinghe as tokens of appreciation.
Minister of Digital Infrastructure and Information
Technology Mr. Ajith P. Perera, Secretary to the Minister, Chairman IET Sri Lanka Network and other relevant officials of
The proposed IoT strategic framework has seven policy elements, in reaching the above identified long term and short term strategic objectives. These seven strategic elements are organized into three sub categories addressing environmental strategies, institutionalization strategies and the strategies related to the characteristics of the envisaged IoT platform, as shown in
This strategic framework is developed with the intention of deploying a vibrant IoT development community in the country with sufficient quantum of connected devices, a robust network to enable such connectivity resulting in a secure and reliable IoT platform. Our society needs to be matured to a liberal, modern and connected one through IoT. This strategy envisages such transformation to be driven through home-grown solutions and thereby to acquire skills and competencies to our industry so that our country can be positioned in the forefront of the global IT solutions market.
The establishment of an institutional mechanism for co-ordination – the IoT Council of Sri Lanka is pivotal around an institutional mechanism setup for the purpose of promoting rapid and orderly development of the IoT industry in the Country. It is proposed that council to be consists of stakeholder representations from the Government, Private Sector, relevant Professional Organizations, Service Providers, Solution Developers, Research Community and Academia.
This council shall take a leading role in the community empowerment through development of skills and organized research. Further, council may operate as an umbrella organization in setting up directions for the development of hardware, firmware and software solution providers and in procuring wide assistance both from the government and other stakeholders.
IoT development through private/public partnership will be dependent on the immediate and short-term profitability of such engagement. As it was with the Internet, such economic breakeven will only occur at the middle stages of the development. Therefore, for the purpose of development of standards, regulations, human capital etc., the intervention of the public sector organizations will be of utmost importance. Thus, a new model for the public and private partnership in harnessing the public sector stability with the private sector dynamism has to be established so that the profit oriented private sector can work with the public sector in the healthy development of the IoT. In addition, the IoT council should assist the government to identify and remove barriers for the healthy development of the industry.
The socio-economic interaction of Connected Things, Connectivity, and Analytics are not sufficient to generate the required degree of interplay and freedom to metamorphose the country’s data network into IoT, unless the Government acts as a catalyzing agent. Therefore, the motivation for this road map can be declared as follows;
“Sri Lanka as a nation awaiting a breakthrough growth, the advent of the IoT could be a game-changer. But that opportunity may not be materialized without the critical enabling conditions. This roadmap identifies how we can catalyze IoT led economic growth for development and prosperity”.