ICTA Cluster Development unit launches CRI

The launch of the Cluster Readiness Index (CRI) developed by the Regional Cluster Development unit of Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) of Sri Lanka was held recently. 

ICTA is the designated agency of the government mandated to drive the digital transformation of the country. ICTA has taken the initiative to formulate and drive the national digital policy through strategic action plans. The digital transformation roadmap oversees strategies to thrive the digital economy, with higher operational efficiency, lower costs and better services as well as outcomes for the government and the citizens. 

The development of Regional Clusters is a key initiative to achieve the objectives of the digital economy strategy. The Regional Cluster Development Programme of ICTA has segmented Sri Lanka into five regional clusters to assess the readiness for digital adoption and analyse the requirements at regional levels, the Western, Central, Southern, Northern and Eastern regions.

ICTA believes that a blanket rule cannot be applied across the country for digital strategies, especially due to the significant digital divide within regions, uneven resource distribution, disparities in the socio-economic conditions. Therefore, ICTA has developed a model, the CRI to evaluate the readiness of the regional ecosystem for establishing technology clusters, with the consultation of all stakeholders in the technology industry and guidance from the Census and Statistics Department. The CRI provides an image of the status of readiness of each region for establishing Technology Clusters and the intervention required for regional technology industry development.
In his welcome remarks, ICTA CEO Eng. Mahinda B. Herath said, “The CRI is an integral part of the digital transformation strategy we have developed for the country. The CRI helps to identify the strengths and weaknesses in each region in order to optimise efforts, energy and resources in driving the digital transformation targeted in that region.” 

Chief Digital Economy Officer Anura De Alwis, who is the co-author and the primary researcher of the project, presented an overview and said, “The digital economy is a holistic environment and each region in the country has different aspects to be looked at individually and it has its own areas of improvement. Therefore, we realised that we cannot apply blanket rules, policies or procedures to the entire country and we that we need to have certain indicators and indexes to expedite the development of digital economy of Sri Lanka.  This is the birth of the CRI.”
Federation of IT Industry Sri Lanka Board Director Abbas Kamrudeen stated, “The CRI is going to be very critical for developing the digital economy of Sri Lanka in different aspects such as increasing export values or figures, developing Sri Lanka as a technology hub or increasing the productivity and efficiency of Sri Lanka. We should move forward and create awareness and understanding among every single stakeholder in the region on the importance of this index to create understanding, ownership and competition for a better, benchmarking and valuable results among the regions to move forward.”

A special thanks was extended to the panel of experts, who immensely contributed in the CRI validation exercise conducted to corroborate the CRI framework for the government of Sri Lanka.

A note of appreciation and special acknowledgement was extended at Anura De Alwis and Chadika Yahampath for their valuable contribution and unwavering support as the authors of the CRI and also other ICTA officials for their tremendous support to develop the CRI framework.