I am sitting in China, writing this. It may be a case of observer bias, but I find the Sri Lankan young people I deal with more nimble in thinking and in command of English than their counterparts here. Yet, according to a ranking by IBM as reported by LBO, China has made a dramatic jump from 13th position in 2009 to 5th position in 2010, while Sri Lanka is holding steady at 12th place. Is this a cause for self-congratulation or self-examination? Is the glass half-full or half-empty?
Fidelity of digitized data in the Real-Time Biosurveillance Program (RTBP) was not promising; especially with the personnel in Sri Lanka with no medical knowledge but technically capable were producing up to 45% noisy data (second stacked graph). On the contrary the medically trained but less fluent in mobile phone usage Indian nurses were less prone to producing noisy data. The Indian health workers had an incentive because the erroneous data would produce false alarms, and they would need to respond to these false alarms or it would portray a bad image of the health situation in their area; while the Sri Lanka data digitizing personnel had no incentive besides picking up a paycheck for the data entry work they did. The data was submitted through the mHealthSurvey mobile software that works on less expensive Java-enabled hand-helds. The RTBP envisions that hospital data is submitted each day; thus, the real-time expectations.
To learn about the state of broadband in Sri Lanka, one has to rely on the media and on company releases, not the normal source which is the Ministry or regulatory agency. Today LBO carried the following story: Sri Lanka Telecom, the island’s largest fixed access operator said it had added 80,000 new broadband customers in 2010 and its base of 200,000 customers was 70 percent of the market. About 20 percent of the operator’s wireline customers were now using its ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) services, the telco said in a statement. From the above we can conclude that Sri Lanka has roughly 286,000 broadband subscriptions. We have no idea whether this number includes those using dongles, or simply those who subscribed to the “fixed wireless” options provided by LankaCom, Dialog etc.
While voice revenues are declining, it appears that broadband will save the day. But only the day. The theoretical maximum of ADSL connections is 869,190 at this time in Sri Lanka. Many of the fixed lines cannot be used to supply ADSL or are connected to government departments, pensioner’s homes, etc. which may not want broadband, so the actual market size is lower.
Internet brings people closer, gives more opportunities and it is a sea, with different kinds of fish. Indi Samarajiva wrote in The Sunday Leader, about few Sri Lankans making a living, without actually going to a conventional office. But simply login in to internet to use Twitter, Skype, Virtual Private Networks (VPN) and so on and make a living, as well as LIVE it. Indi introduces Fahim Farook, Navin Weeraratne and Monalee Suranimala, as tech savvy fishermen in this different kind of sea. All of these characters launch their metaphorical boats from the island of Sri Lanka, off the southern coast of India, recently emerged from years of war but blessed with many English speaking, IT literate people, functional Internet infrastructure and a low cost of living.
Not just eHealth but in any national innovation, finding a champion to own, operate, and promote the new intervention is crucial. We found ours in Sri Lanka to take the Real-Time Biosurveillance Program (RTBP) to the next level; our champion is Dr. R.M.S.
Earlier this year the TRC appointed a special committee to develop broadband in Sri Lanka. Possibly based on its recommendations the TRC has issued new directives on broadband, placing emphasis on customer’s right to know, an approach we at LIRNEasia also promoted a few months prior to the constitution of the committee. The guidelines had been issued in August. We regret not giving them publicity at the time. With the intention of raising awareness among broadband subscribers, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission has issued a set of guidelines for broadband service providers.
The Real-Time Biosurveillance Program (RTBP) held a news conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka on September 14, 2010 at the Cinnamon Lake Side Hotel. This is list of the articles published in the News papers:
The ITU dataset is the mother lode, mined by all. But sometimes, it is good to interrogate the quality of what the ITU produces. The most recent instance of ITU data being subject to sophisticated analysis without any attention being paid to the quality of the data is by noted ICT4D scholar, Richard Heeks. In a previous essay, Heeks interrogated the numbers emanating from the ITU on “mobile subscriptions.” It is a pity the same was not done in the recent piece on Internet and broadband.
For the perpetually connected, the experience of being unconnected is salutary; but not pleasant. The Sinharaja Forest Reserve is a world heritage site about three hours driving distance from Colombo. I spent two days there and unexpectedly found myself unconnected, except for a single location in the hotel that allowed the sending and receiving of texts if the phone was held high! It is not that the place is completely disconnected from electronic networks. I paid for the hotel using a credit card, which was processed through a fixed line.
Workaround, a term that describes an improvisation when the optimal solution is not available, is a key element in LIRNEasia’s work. Not that we particularly like them, but it seems that workarounds are all there are in our region, because governments fail to provide the optimal solutions. I was planning to write a short piece on the workaround that connected Sri Lanka first to email and then to the Internet back in the early 1990s based on a talk I gave at the .lk conference early July. But since the paper doesn’t look like it will get written right now and because I want to crowdsource the fact checking, I am posting the slides here: Dot LK .
I was impressed when the ICT Agency made a presentation at a recent conference, that included a detailed response to concerns that Sri Lanka was dropping in international rankings in the ICT space. The presentation included action items that would address weak points and would thus result in improved rankings. e government was central to the design of e Sri Lanka and is perhaps the program area that has absorbed most of the USD 83 million funds. Therefore, the UN e gov rankings are very important. Sadly, the 2010 rankings indicate that Sri Lanka’s position has deteriorated in relative and absolute terms.
The key take home from the workshop were: the Regional Epidemiologist – Dr. P. Hemachandra – stressing the need for Syndromic surveillance; especially, the ability to monitor escalating fever like disease and geographic clusters of increase in common symptoms. Dr. Lakshman Edirisinghe (Deputy Director Planning) emphasized the need for comprehensive patient clinical data for becoming a data driven organization that can optimize the resources opposed to speculative expert opinion.
LIRNEasia’s preliminary round of mobile broadband quality testing in selected locations in Western Province unveils both hopes and issues. The good news is that the quality of both key pre-paid mobile broadband services is satisfactory, in majority of locations. However, unusual quality drops in several places indicates that this performance is not always a certainty. In general, a mobile broadband user in Western Province can expect a reasonable quality unless a rare issue like the distance from a tower or a higher number of simultaneous users hinders it. LIRNEasia tested the broadband quality of the popular pre-paid High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) broadband connections of the two key providers.
CHAKULA is a newsletter produced by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC). Named after the Swahili word for ‘food’, it aims to mobilise African civil society around ICT policy for sustainable development and social justice issues. The latest issue features an e-interview with LIRNEasia’s CEO Rohan Samarajiva, but it is not the only reason why we thought of highlighting the issue. The content is interesting and very readable. We publish two e-interviews from July 2010 issue here fully, as they are not available on public domain.
We live in an age of hazards. The climate change will make it worse. Be prepared or perish seems to be the nature’s message. At the inaugural public lecture of LIRNEasia’s annual Disaster Risk Reduction events, we will discuss how best to face the future threats and what the communities, government and private sector can do. PRESENTATION Vinya Ariyaratne is General Secretary of the Lanka Jatika Sarvodaya Shramadana Sangamaya.