| Dear Colleagues,
CSI Foundation Day, which we celebrate on 6th of March every year, is just 5 weeks away. I propose, let us all strive to make it an occasion to pay a genuine tribute to our founders and with great appreciation to Founder President Late Prof. R. Narasimhan, former Director Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). He is considered as the doyen of Indian Computer Science. He along with his team of scientists at TIFR, encouraged by Dr. Homi Bhabha, designed and built our country’s first Digital Computer, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Automatic Calculator (TIFRAC), way back in the year 1960.
As the occasion of Foundation day approaches, let us be reminded of the vision of these great scientists, their great passion for Innovation, R&D and high level of commitment towards use and promotion of Science and Technology for social and economic prosperity of the Nation. | |  |
CSI’s Mission and Key Objectives also echo the vision to facilitate research, knowledge sharing and working closely with the industry, government bodies and academia to ensure that the benefits of IT advancement ultimately percolate down to every single citizen of India. CSI promotes IT for the masses as Dr. Homi Bhabha, and other visionary scientists have rightly advised.
Friends, being passionate and committed members, we have an obligation towards fulfillment of mission and objectives of our society. One of the important elements of our mission is promotion of R & D in Computer Science Technology. We must motivate our members and youngsters to consider research as an important option for his/ her career. | | | | Teach R & D Workshops:
| I am happy to mention that our “Teach R & D” workshops shall start soon. Thanks to our all India student coordinator, Shri. Ranga Raj Gopal, for sharing plans in the ExecCom meeting held on 21st January, 2012.
These workshops are currently being aimed at postgraduate students and young faculty members to motivate them to pursue research as a career. The topics for discussion may include Mobile and Pervasive Computing, Data Mining, Machine Learning, Human Computer Interaction, Information Retrieval, Cryptography and Security, Combinatorial Optimization, Computational Intelligence, Wireless Networks etc. The objective is to ignite young minds and show them a profitable path for self- growth and nation building.
Senior pool of researchers will be requested to support this program. They will initiate proposals and invite and involve research labs from the industry and seek their participation and funding.
Prof NL Sarda, Divisional Chairman, Education & Research as convener along with Prof. Shyama Sundar, TIFR, Mumbai, Prof. M L. Sai Kumar, Institute of Public Enterprise, Hyderabad, Dr. R. Nadarajan, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, Dr. B Ravindran, IIT Madras, Dr. Venkatesh Raman , Chennai, Dr. Madhavan Mukund , CMI Chennai have agreed to extend their support. We need to build a team of a good number of researches on all India basis to take up this initiative in an organized manner and provide mentoring to youngsters.
Since the past two decades, the Indian IT industry has been the beneficiary of various promotions and concessions. It may be worth requesting IT majors to spend at least 6-7% of their profits on core R & D activities and extend support to such type of initiatives.May be for the amount spent on R & D, the Government may consider some additional tax benefits to be granted. Development of an R & D eco-system shall be the most important aspect of our overall strategy. We shall try to promote role of R & D and innovation both for individual growth as well as for the Nation’s growth in each of CSI’s technical programs and conferences. Chapters shall promote R & D as one of the key delivery of CSI through Guest lectures, by announcing schemes and by organizing research symposiums. Additionally, we may consider constituting special awards for the best R & D projects and for best PhD thesis through a transparent process. | | | | CSI Foundation Day:
| Promotion of Research & Quality education is the Agenda.
Our Chief Editor of CSI Research Journal, Prof. Shyama sunder, TIFR and the editorial team is are getting ready to launch the first on-line issue of CSI Computing Science Journal, may be on 6th March 2012.
Our CSI Transactions Chairman, Shri. S. Mahalingam has also informed ExecCom, that in the next 3-4 months, the first issue of CSI Transactions would be ready for launch. Roll-out of these two initiatives along with successful organization of “Teach R & D” workshops will definitely help in improving Research Eco-systems in our country and will help to put Computer Science research publications from India on the world map. This may be considered as one of the finest tribute to the hard work of our founder fathers.
All Chapters and Student branches shall celebrate CSI foundation day by organizing programs, Guest Lectures, Quizzes etc. to promote knowledge about the benefits of Research. We are planning to share new technological developments in order to provide solutions to societal and economical problems. providing rich platform for discussions and summits on the subject of ICT for societal growth is another important agenda for our programs and events.
A special drive for membership shall be organized. I am sure that the Foundation day celebration in a unison manner will help to create brand equity and motivate all members to work for a common cause. Programs and events of CSI foundation day shall seize attention of our stakeholders and re-assure commitment of CSI for promoting the rightful use of ICT and Hardware and Electronic technology. You all are invited to participate. | | | | | New Dimension of IT Growth and CIO Forums: | Recently we have seen evolution of New IT technologies. As per the estimates by Gartner, currently the number of devices connected or networked intermittently are more than 50 billion. Many other new developments like social media, cloud computing have started impacting Corporate business plans. CIOs have a great opportunity to include these kinds of changes as part of the strategy planning. I strongly feel that, CSI is in an advantageous position to provide a rich platform to CIOs at National level and facilitate deliberations and share their experiences. CSI platform can be leveraged by CIOs to evolve a common structure of policies, like today Software licensing policies and schemes are being sometimes found counterproductive especially in the new environment of Virtualization. There is no association which advices and recommends IT policies for Corporate and SMEs. The role of CIOs, Heads of IT and IT State Secretaries are becoming more demanding day by day. This professional community requires a good understanding of technology, strategy planning, business and knowledge of different frameworks, tools and practices, to be really successful. CIO functions as a link between Industry and Business. This role demands professional excellence and competencies at different levels.
I find this a good opportunity for starting incubation centers for CIOs to provide them education and advanced studies at few of Chapters located in Tier I and II cities. Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Vishakhapatnam may be considered for this opportunity. There is a need to structure these short-term programs. In the past, we have started CIO forums, which provide platform for knowledge sharing. Many CIOs have been beneficiaries of CSI IT excellence awards. Our CSI Communications carries a special column for CIOs. Seeding has already been done. An expert committee can be constituted by ExecCom along with members of chapter chairmen and a few CIOs, who shall deliberate and evolve plans in the next 2-3 months. For formation of Chapter Committees, we shall try to invite a few CIOs, IT State secretaries and senior government officials and a few academicians, this mix shall leverage a good relationship between corporate sector, government and academia. | | | | | Corporate Knowledge Clusters: | It is worth considering doing a pilot project by persuading few of our corporate members and IT majors to start a knowledge cluster locally in their company, where few of their staff members can be requested to become members of CSI who shall start a discussion forum and invite a guest speaker, wherein CSI local chapter shall provide initial support. This will help to build a good CSI presence among the corporate sector. Our successful student model was started in a similar manner. | | | | | CSI Pride: | There is a pressing need to make available knowledge of latest trends in IT to local industry and motivate our students and professionals residing in Tier II and Tier III cities. Recently our Vishakhapatnam Chapter organized a three day long, three track International Conference at a Five Star Hotel venue , with the support of Vizag Steel plants and a few local colleges. It drew more than 500 delegates from nearby locations and provided opportunity to more than 800 Research Paper contributors, out of which 100 quality papers were published in the form of a book published by M/s Springer. My sincere thanks to Chapter Chairman, Shri Chaudhary, who is also the MD of ViIzag Steel plants and Mr. Satyanarayan - Hon. Secretary, RVP – Dr. DBV Sarma and our team at Vizag for putting up such a grand show. The entire CSI family shall be proud of this achievement. This is one of the finest examples where local user industry joined hands with CSI to promote a technical conferece and research eco system. I received very good feedbacks regarding organization a good number of technical programs by our Udaipur and Ujjain Chapters. My hearty good wishes to our team members at these chapters. | | | | | ExecCom Decisions: | Recently ExecCom met in Mumbai and deliberated many new plans and schemes. A decision was taken to constitute the following 3 committees.
Education Policy Study Committee: Convener: Prof. NL Sarda, Divisional Chairman, Education and Research.
This committee shall study current structure and programs of CSI education, Training programs particularly being run by Director Education and other Constituencies and come up with a framework and list of programs leading to CSI certifications along with corrective actions.
Administrative Reform Committee: Convener: Dr. DBV Sarma, RVP
This committee shall examine current administrative structure and practices at HQ/ ED and suggest suitable setup and profiles of staff for providing good service to members as a professional society. Also it will provide guidance to carry on administrative and statutory activities including financial management and membership growth with professional excellence on par with other professional bodies.
Know your Customer (KYC) – For identifying new membership groups and benefit structure: Convener: Shri. Anil Srivastava, RVP
My hearty good wishes to conveners of these committees and team members from ExecCom and others, who agreed to spare their time for these valuable exercises, which would help to bring new improvements in CSI functioning and provide improved services to members.
HQ staff will assist these committees to provide inputs and share information.
ExecCom also discussed various other important schemes including plans for CSI KM portal, Digital Library, special programs for student collaborative portal, Revenue sharing formula of events and workshop share between HQ and Chapters. | | | | | Constitution Amendment Exercise: | This exercise, which was started 10 months back with the help of our Past President Shri. Lalit Sawhney as convener, provided a good opportunity for discussion among seniors at different levels of our organization structure and therein few improvements at various facets including roles and responsibilities of elected members and committees. It is always good to have diverse views and opinions, but considering quasi legal framework of society laws and bylaws, this exercise involves a fair amount of technical expertise and in-depth knowledge of pros and cons of each suggested change. Once areas and list of amendments are shortlisted and deliberated by ExecCom , adoption or rejection shall be left to the General body. I am happy, many of our seniors shared their thoughts, and now a final list of suggested amendments is being put up on CSI web site for seeking further comments. We shall strive hard to evolve our policies and actions for bringing improvements both in numbers and quality of structure and services. We shall take a note of expansion plans of other professional bodies like IEEE, ACM in India, and take suitable measures to be forerunners in carrying out professional activities.One of our differentiating factors is competitive edge in quality and good service to members. I am quite hopeful that we will receive your whole-hearted support and feedback. | | | | | | | | |
Jai hind!
With love,
| | | M D Agrawal | | | President, Computer Society of India | | | | |