The press conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka and Washington DC of the World Bank President, Mr. Wolfensohn is available in its entirety via Audio and Video streaming. More details on post-Tsunami reconstruction effort can be found on World Bank’s website. Detailed damage assessments will follow initial estimates WASHINGTON, January 12th, 2005-World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn said Wednesday that reconstruction in the tsunami-hit countries of Asia and Africa must be driven by the local communities affected by the disaster, adding that the process of rebuilding should be transparent and ensure accountability for the funds pledged.
SMS enlisted for Tsunami warning system? By Ben Charny, CNET News.com Monday, January 10 2005 11:55 AM At least five countries have begun developing an alert system using cell phone text messages, a response to the catastrophic Asian tsunami that exposed flaws in present-day early warning schemes. Discussions among officials in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand, which were hard hit by the killer tsunami, along with France, have begun in just the last few days, according to a source familiar with the plans. The goal is to supplement older systems that proved little help for nations in the path of the immense waves in late December that have so far killed more than 140,000 people in 11 countries.
An article describing the thinking behind the design of e Sri Lanka, with emphasis on e government and infrastructure is at . As the title note states, this was a collective design that many contributed to. So, I cannot take credit for the design, though I will have to take responsibility for any errors in the article. This is a good journal for those working on developing country infrastructure issues. Subscribe.
From www.timesonline.com Telecom charity forges links for tsunami victims by Elizabeth Judge Vodafone and its industry peers are backing a new kind of aid for striken areas AS EARLY images of the Asian tsunami disaster were flashed around the world, an aircraft loaded with equipment touched down in Sri Lanka at Colombo international airport. Within minutes, technicians had set up an emergency telecommunications centre with satellite phone lines and high-speed internet connections. Relief organisations were quick to avail themselves of the service.
Question asked by a journalist: is there any basis for expecting that Sri Lanka’s very successful ICT strategy will in fact help in the economic recovery from the tsunami? For example, could ICT-enabled industries provide opportunities to replace the jobs/industries that have been damaged, or could the telecom structure help speed rebuilding efforts? In other words, have Sri Lanka’s efforts in building a digital economy put it in a better position to recover from this disaster? Answer: The fisheries industry that got almost wiped out had very low productivity. Itll come back, hopefully with better productivity.
Saving Grace Lanka Business Online 28 December 2004 15:22 hours Thirty six stranded British tourists were rescued in Sri Lanka thanks to a mobile phone with one of them and technology that could pin-point the user, an official involved in the rescue told AFP…. see full story
The wind was not held back Below is a talk given 6 years ago entitled “To hold back the wind.” That was an attempt to get disaster preparedness going. It failed, obviously. The walls of water came in with no warning; thousands died instantaneously; millions are homeless. Parentheses refer to 9/11 in the US for scale: in a few hours on the 26th of December more that 17,900 (3,000) died out of a population of 19 million (280 million).
Dear friends, well-wishers and partners of LIRNEasia, all members of the LIRNEasia team based in Colombo are safe. Despite the devastation wrought by the tsunami over most of coastal Sri Lanka on Dec 26, our office is functioning. Sarvodaya is grass-roots organization that has been around for 47 years and is doing an incredible job of getting relief to the tsunami victims. They have an extensive network of volunteers and stations in 34 Sri Lankan towns, including the most heavily damaged. Although they are busy providing temporary shelters, drinking water, food and medicine to tsunami victims, they are also gearing up for medium and long-term rehabilitation that includes reconstructing homes, providing trauma counselling, preventing outbreak of disease and providing a home to the orphaned children.
Rapid Response Unit: 14 December 2004 LIRNEasia made a short, but productive call on Nepals High-Level Commission for Information Technology (HLCIT) last week, to advise on jump-starting its e government and reform processes. The visit came within less than ten days of a request for Rapid Response assistance by Mr. Sharad Chandra Shah, HLCITs Vice Chairman. In his three day visit, executive director Rohan Samarajiva conducted two key sessions, with HLCIT and decision making level representatives of government, private sector and civil society. The first was a seminar, concerned with how Nepal can rapidly implement e-government initiatives, drawing on experience from Sri Lanka.
On 16 December LIRNEasia will hold a colloquium to get input on a proposal being finalised for advancing better governance of the ICT sector in Sri Lanka by developing a benchmark indicator system that allows cross-country comparison. The proposal involves the collection of high quality set of data to assess the regulatory environment and to measure the performance of the ICT sector. Armed with a comprehensive set of ICT benchmark indicators, it is hoped that civil society groups and potential investors would have a basis of comparing regulatory and sector performance in the peer countries of the South Asian region and could pressure policymakers to better governance. The main activities would involve setting up a data collection mechanism, conducting a survey and holding a workshop for regulatory staff to define data standards and disseminating the findings in a form of a report through multiple media. The colloquium will be held on Dec 16 (Thursday), 5:30PM at LIRNEasia‘s office in SLIDA, 28/10 Malalasekera Mawatha, Colombo 7.
Yesterday, I spoke to a large and restive crowd (made so by lack of air conditioning and a delayed start) in Matara (main city in the South of Sri Lanka) at the launch of the Pathfinder Foundation’s first book, a Sinhala translation of Janos Kornai’s Toward a free economy. I was asked to talk about globalization and the relevance of Kornai’s ideas for facing the challenges posed by globalization. In this talk that I pieced together thanks to time zone differences that caused me to wake up at 3 in the morning while in the US, I illustrated the issues referring to Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), a broad area of service exports for which efficient, flexible and low-cost telecom is a pre-condition. I think the talk provides the "big picture" of the necessity of telecom reforms of the type that we at LIRNEasia are involved in. If we are to go beyond simply giving people phones, to giving them "money in the pocket and hope in the heart" this big picture is essential.
* Eastern Nepal and Sri Lanka least-cost subsidy auctions* Innovating at the markets (Indonesian WiFi)* Indias universal service fund* Replicating Grameen Bangladesh* Demand-Side subsidies* Microeconomic assesments, etc* Focus on lack of backbone* Annual Sector and Regulatory Performance Indicators* Ongoing training programs* Web
Presentation by Harsha de Silva, CTO Forum 2004: ICT : Business and Development 20-21 September, Colombo, Sri Lanka The Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization’s (CTO) second annual forum was held in Colombo this year, on September 20-21. Subtitled the biggest annual Commonwealth ICT event, participants included director-level delegations from member countries and representatives of its sector members. The aim of the event was to bring together ICT sector stakeholders and strengthen their ability to go on meeting the challenges of accelerating Universal Access, bridging the international, as well as urban-rural digital divides, and achieving the Millennium Development Goals. A great deal of emphasis was placed on the increased use of fixed and wireless broadband technologies, such as VSAT to achieve ICT4D objectives. In this context, the Govi Gnana Service, or GGS an innovative ICT solution to agricultural price volatility and resulting agricultural poverty in Sri Lanka was presented by Harsha de Silva of e-development labs.
People seem to be biting the New York Times pretty hard this week, so I’ve added a direct feed to Circuits in the sidebar, and one to WiFi News for good measure. These are just temporary since people seem to be talking about these topics. We can get feeds to most big news sources (Harsha). If you can find a RSS or XML button on any sites you like they can be syndicated. This, for example, is a Gizmodo Wireless feed below.
Friday October 15 2004, 5.30pm, SLIDA premises, Colombo 7 1. WDR Expert Forum 2004 September’s WDR Expert Forum at Mount Lavinia was a success Next expert forum in Sri Lanka: Sept. 30 , Oct 1 and 2 [half day], 2005 Sector and Regulatory Performance Indicators: may be WDR theme for 2005/6; proposed workshop for this in early 2005 ? Pondicherry.
This serves, perhaps, as a response to the most recent comment: Almost all the efforts of elites like Prof Samarajeewa has been a farce. The rural -urban gap has widened as clearly indicative of offerings made in wireless Chamintha Thilakarathna (Reuters) Colombo, October 1 After 25 years selling fruit and vegetables at a market in downtown Colombo, Sri Lankan trader MW Ranjith made an investment that to his amazement transformed his life and his business — he bought a mobile phone. For years Ranjith, and thousands of traders and farmers like him, went without phones, discouraged by high land line charges and lengthy installation delays. But now a boom in the mobile telecoms market is pulling the informal sector into the economy and even influencing food prices. “Before I got the phone, if I ran out of vegetables I had no way of getting in touch with farmers,” said the 50-year-old trader, sitting with his phone in one hand and calculating his profits for the day with the other.