HEADLINES
JOBS
COM:PORT
POLICY POLICE
ARCHIVES

Hardware panel to soon submit report

T O D A Y

• Govt by twisted pair • Hardware report soon • HCL shuffles • Novell's e-trade bid

Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers President Professor R K Arora gave this assurance recently to reporters in Hyderabad.

The Sub-Committee on IT Hardware had been set up outside the Prime Minister's Task Force on Information Technology because it was perceived that most of the 108 recommendations of the Task Force had overlooked hardware development, Arora explained.

The general feeling is that the Task Force's recommendations are mostly for the industry and there is not much thrust on indigenous research and development, which is absolutely vital for development of an Indian hardware brands.

"What we are producing are only coders and not software engineers in the true sense," Professor Arora, who heads the computer science department at the Indian Institute of Information Technology in New Delhi said with remorse.

"Can you believe that there are only 25 people in the country's five IITs and the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore who are pursuing research and development career in the information technology area?" he asked.

He said the two-day IETE annual technical convention on 'Shifting paradigms in information technology: challenges for India' would focus on technologies and identify challenges for the country.

The convention will begin in Hyderabad from September 26. It would be attended by most of the 3,800 members. The focus is to be on communications and global computing, computer networking, the new paradigms in software engineering, national informatics strategies, the challenges of privacy and security, impact of Web applications in the business world and information technology in rural areas.

Father of India's Param Supercomputers Dr Vijay P Bhatkar is to deliver the 30th Bhabha Memorial Lecture on the inaugural session to be opened by Lok Sabha Speaker G M C Balayogi.

CSIR Director-General Dr R A Mashelkar will be conferred with an honorary fellowship and the only distinguished fellowship of the institution this year would be given to TFIR Computer Systems Group's former chief Professor P V S Rao.

Distance education: The IETE has tied up with the Department of Electronics and the All India Council for Technical Education to extend courses in telecommunication, electronics and information technology for students all over the country through a distance education system, Arora announced.

He said the DoE has also agreed to provide funds for the distance education course provided through satellite and CD-ROM.

He said the IETE has already set up a centre for distance education through space (IETE-CDETS), which reaches students even in remote areas of the country through satellite.

The institution also proposed to start an advance course, both at post-graduation and diploma levels in computer sciences through its Hyderabad centre and the approval of the AICTE and DoE was awaited, he added.

Arora said the AICTE has given "oral consent" for post-graduate and diploma in telecom management and software engineering.

The financial aspects are under discussion, he added.

He said the institution has provided free training to about 5,000 women from economically backward sections in information technology and the course would be expanded under its human resource development initiative.

UNI

Tell us what you think