SHIBU LAL HAS APPOINTED AS THE CHAIR MAN OF ICTAK

SHIBU LAL HAS APPOINTED

AS THE CHAIR MAN OF ICTAK

The State government has appointed S.D. Shibulal, chief executive officer and managing director of Infosys, chairman of the board of governors of the Information and Communication Technology Academy of Kerala (ICTAK), which is likely to start operations at Technopark at Thiruvananthapuram by January.The government has issued an order dated December 10 appointing the chairman, while sanctioning the issue of one share of ICTAK to the chairman as a beneficial holding.This was in conformity with Article 63 of the Article of Association of ICTAK, which stipulates that the chairman of the board shall be a person of repute from the information technology (IT) industry.The interview for recruiting the chief executive officer of the academy is in the final stage.

The government has nominated the secretaries of Higher Education, IT and Finance as its representatives to the board of ICTAK, which has been registered as a no-profit company under Section 25 of the Companies Act, 1956. C. Jayasankar Prasad, former Director of the Kerala State IT Mission, has been appointed its special officer.ICTAK is being set up in a public-private partnership mode by Kerala State IT Infrastructure Ltd. (KSITIL) at a cost of Rs. 14 crore. The Union government has provided Rs. 6 crore as grant-in-aid, while the State government has to contribute 29 per cent of the remaining Rs. 8 crore and the IT industry, 74 per cent.Five major IT industry players have already consented to invest in the academy. Tata Consultancy Services and Sowparnika Education Infrastructure Private Ltd. will invest Rs. 2 crore each, IBS Software Solutions Rs. 42 lakh and NeST and UST Global Rs. 25 lakh each. “We are also planning to have a tie-up with the National Association of Software and Services Companies,” Mr. Prasad told The Hindu .The academy is taking off in the State after much delay, while a similar academy granted to Tamil Nadu around the same time has become highly successful and made much headway in improving the employability of graduates for IT and ITeS industries, which is the aim of the academy.

The delay can be attributed to the needless flip-flops in choosing the implementing agency and the subsequent controversy.Initially, KSITIL was entrusted with the task of setting up the academy in a PPP mode following an order issued by the Union Ministry of Communication and IT in 2008. KSITIL was set to form a special purpose vehicle for the project when the State government made the Institute of Human Resources Development (IHRD) the implementing agency in 2010.However, a meeting of the Project Review Steering Group of the Department of Information Technology held in February 2012 turned this down and insisted on setting up the academy in the PPP mode, forcing the State government to issue a revised order handing back KSITIL the mandate to set up the academy.

Prof. John Kurakar