FITIS successfully concludes inaugural Education Forum 2022
The Education and Training Chapter of Federation of Information Technology Industry Sri Lanka (FITIS) in partnership with the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) successfully conducted the inaugural FITIS Education Forum 2022 on Wednesday 16th March 2022 at the Hilton Colombo Residences.
Themed “Identifying and responding to emerging challenges in education teaching and training to build a highly skilled future workforce”, the forum hoped to engage and enable private sector IT education institutes towards building capable human resources to the ICT Industry to fulfill the target of a 300,000 ICT workforce by 2024.
“The inaugural Education Forum hopes to create a dialogue between Sri Lanka’s Educational industry leaders, IT industry as well as the Government and Diplomatic community to identify and respond to emerging challengers in teaching, education and training to build a highly skilled future workforce to the society while also identifying any possible issues faced” said Vajira Karunaratne, President - FITIS Education and Training Chapter and Chairman, FITIS Education Forum.
The event also marked the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between FITIS and the ICTA to enable the better cooperation between the two bodies for national-level capacity building initiatives.
Oshada Senanayake, Chairman of ICTA highlighted, “As the ICT industry is considered the most prominent industry which will play a pivotal role in making Sri Lankan economic development at a swift phase; capacity building would be the key enabler to make it a reality. We are confident that this partnership with FITIS will help the industry to achieve these targets.”
An interactive panel discussion, comprising leading government and private sector industry leaders brought forward several new ideas for the betterment of the industry as well as the future generation of IT students.
“As the apex body for the ICT industry covering all major industry segments, we are indeed thankful to the FITIS Education and Training Chapter for organising this timely event. I have no doubt that the matters discussed and ideas put forward today would greatly benefit the present and future generations of Sri Lanka” said Dr. Prasad Samarasinghe, Chairman – FITIS.
Key resources from the Government and Private sector present at the event included Vajira Karunaratne, President of Education & Training Chapter – FITIS, Dr. Prasad Samarasinghe, Chairman – FITIS, Oshada Senanayake, Chairman – ICTA, Dr. Upali Sedere, State Secretary - Ministry of Education Reforms, Sameera Jayawardena – Director Capacity Building – ICTA , Niel Gunadasa, Additional Secretary - State Ministry of Education Reforms, Dr. J. A. D. J. Jayalath, Deputy Director General – TVEC , Indika De Zoysa, Vice Chairman – FITIS, Vasana Edirisuriya, Director ICT Branch - Ministry of Education, Dr. Kithsiri Manchanayakke, Past Chairman – FITIS, Harini Jayasinghe, Director – MoE (Non State Higher Education), and Chandima Janaki, Director – MoE (Non State Higher Education - Student Loans) while the Moderator for the panel discussion was Mr. Shehan Kumar, CEO – FITIS.