The Next Generation of Thought!

The Public Services Summit in Stockholm coinciding with the Nobel Prize
ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo was a must attend event for every thinking
policy planner or educationist concerned with the evolution of technology and
management. Over 300 people assembled for three days of rich presentations,
interactions, and networking in a spirit of collaboration that will shape the
way for future generations to succeed in the world!

One of the six keynotes that were the hallmark of the event, my treatise on
the role of technology in presenting a true blended learning environment for
developed and developing countries sparked much debate and a number of breakout
sessions. The best of academicians are struggling to get hold of the new
pedagogy and learning paradigms that will continue the relevance of schools and
colleges. It is not surprising that experiments being conducted in Europe and
multiple institutions in the US are showing how different the learning processes
of the new generation have become. And, the role of video, gaming, and
interactive technologies is no longer an optional add-on but a cornerstone of
the learning processes of tomorrow!

Possibly the most fascinating keynote was the presentation on the next
generation Internet by IIT alumnus and current Cisco chief technology officer,
Padmasree Warrier. As she rightly pointed out, every second on our planet, four
babies are born but thirty-two mobile devices are sold which is a sure sign of
the rapid evolution of communications. The proliferation of real-time media and
rich synchronous communications will make voice mail and email obsolete in our
lifetime, she said and also outlined four trends that will characterize the
future of Internet usage.

Media experience platforms are already transforming education and
entertainment and new collaboration platforms will change the way businessmen
run distributed organizations. Distributed virtualized architectures enabling
abstraction of applications away from their physical hosts is what will make
cloud computing so compelling, and the ability to develop smart connected
communities which is one of Cisicos key areas of thought leadership, will also
be driven by the sustainability movement which is gathering momentum across
countries.

Padmasrees prediction that cloud will evolve through public, private,
hybrid, and community formats and finally see the formation of inter-clouds that
enable higher forms of collaborations between firms is worth watching even as
the world of ICT progresses at its usual breakneck pace!

What was intriguing at the summit were the number of elected politicians and
government bureaucrats who had come from all over the world to understand and
discuss key issues. Governments of the day are facing significant dilemmasthe
need for public access vs the security and privacy imperative, the demand for
expanded services vs the fiat to control public expenditure and operating costs,
and the need to have inter-agency interoperability across public services while
recognizing the need for departmental independence. It is the quality of
thinking that brings solutions and this thinking was in abundance at the summit,
in the presentations made by the former Finnish Prime Minister and EVP of Nokia,
the former cabinet secretary of Canada, and many others. With Indias current
focus on e-government and the appointment of a new CEO of the National Institute
of Smart Governance, one hopes there will be an acceleration of technology
implementation across key government to citizen interfaces and it will lead the
way for public services in the next decade.

Ganesh Natarajan

The author is Vice Chairman & MD of Zensar Technologies. He can be reached
at maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in