Directions Ahead

Homegrown Solutions

To build homegrown technology for home needs is the clear need of the hour. To create homegrown technology India will need to step up research and development that can generate homegrown technology. To catalyse such research, several research and development laboratories will need to be collocated to enable an R&D culture and synergy through convergence of technologies.

The Goa Government announced its plans to set up a National Technology Park to collocate R&D units and provide single window coordination. The government announced its policy to have annual VC and R&D fairs.

In order to make the market grow and service societal needs applications will have to focus on need. Developers will need to serve the distinct requirements of the operator or clerks, managers and governors.

Visions

The IT industry can work to creating a fast world or a world that can process trillions of transactions per second. It can work to create an efficient society, business or process. It can work to build a net-enabled world. It can work to build a huge automaton or work to build a world of connected automated processes.

At the end of the day every transaction or every process enable a societal mission: the reason for the processes being. For example the development of water harvesting projects, the processes of collection, purification, distribution of water all work to enable the societal mission of providing water security.

Information of the transactions or processes or the processes or transactions are not an end in themselves and do not need to be speeded, increased in volume or be made efficient unless they enable the societal mission.

The vision of the IT industry, working to provide IT for society, would therefore be to create a mission oriented information society.

Missions

To realise its vision the IT industry requires a mission that can focus its efforts and select programs, activities and technology creation to realise the vision.

To create a mission-oriented society requires society to be able to identify missions for its processes. This is not possible without information about the processes. Only when there is information that the water department can provide tap connections however people actually want 24 hours clean water can the mission of providing water security evolve.

To create a mission-oriented society also requires society to be able to provide the mission operators, managers and governors with information to enable the mission.

An appropriate mission for the IT industry providing IT for society could therefore be to enable societal missions with information.

Recommendations

The Goa-Agenda recommended that users of IT for society, especially governments must create comprehensive Information Technology plans rather than implement adhoc solutions or automation of existing processes. It was pointed out that there is a heavy cost of adhoc solutions and does not further societal missions.

The Goa Agenda also recommended the creation of intermediate institutions that would bridge the gap between technology on one hand and societal need on the other. These institutions, perhaps not-for-profit NGO’s as they would not have profit motive in using technology but rather apply it as appropriate, could work on a franchise formula for replication to apply IT for society.

The Goa Agenda also urged the government to play the role of a facilitator, not a regulator. The government should especially facilitate the creation of local intermediate institutions through venture funding, and catalysing infrastructure for societal applications.

The Goa Agenda urged that homegrown technology be catalysed and promoted for home use. The underlined the relevance and appropriateness of the Goa Government’s plan to set up a national technology park to collocate R&D units to create homegrown technology for home use.

The Goa Agenda also recommended the government to catalyse a research culture through annual research and venture-capital fairs, as well as enabling R&D labs to be autonomous departments of the university and through seed funding projects involving research for societal applications.

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