Karnataka reviewing IT policy

The Karnataka government is reviewing its information technology policy and seeking inputs from the industry to create the right policy which will play a crucial part in tomorrow's economy, said Shankaralinge Gowda, IT& BT Secretary, Government of Karnataka.

Speaking at the inauguration of Infovision 2005, a seminar on industry and academia collaboration, in Bangalore on Thursday, he said: "Knowledge management is the key, which has opened the doors of Bangalore to the information world and helped it emerge as the intellectual hub. Karnataka has taken many initiatives to keep the momentum going and this step to review the IT policy is to sustain those efforts."

"A collaboration of the information industry with academia is a good effort to bring together the stakeholders in the information and knowledge community to create policies and framework for the coming age," he added.

Speaking on the importance of the summit, Prof. N. Balakrishnan, chairman, Division of Information Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore said: "Due to divergence in technology and usage of media, the time has come for the information society to weave a new fabric of information usage."

Highlighting the growing changes in the information society, he said that this indsutry-academia initiative intends to bring together the stakeholders in the information industry to create policies for the do's and don'ts of information creation and distribution.

On the issue of information policy, Subhas Pani, chief secretary, Government of Orissa said: "One of the critical issues is language, especially in a cultural rich country like ours. There is need for developing a process to set up a repository of current governmental information in public domain. Better information and knowledge management will play a critical role in effective functioning of government."

The summit also saw the launch of International School of Information Management (iSIM) which aims at creating systems and solutions that integrate people, information and technology.

The school is promoted by University of Mysore in collaboration with University of Pittsburgh, IIIT-B and Informatics India Limited, Bangalore.

The two day summit is being organised by Informatics India and International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-B) in collaboration with Technology Information Programme, DSIR, Government of India, Department of Culture, Govt. of India, Ford Foundation, New Delhi and Computer Society of India "� Bangalore Chapter.