Tuesday, January 17 2006 20:16 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Bangalore: Prime Minister of Ireland Bertie Ahern today (Jan 17, 2006) launched the operations in India of the Global e-School and Communities Initiative (GeSCI), a multilaterally funded organisation that supports enhancing the reach and quality of education through deployment of ICTs.

The Dublin-headquartered GeSCI, founded by the UN ICT Task Force, aims at facilitating attainment of the Millennium Development Goals, and would work in India at the national and state levels, assisting the government and other partners for implementing ICT in education strategies and programmes.

Launching the GeSCI operations, Ahern said it was an important UN initiative, of which Ireland was a founding member along with Sweden, Switzerland and Canada, and would add value to the initiatives in India.

He said India was in focus of the new initiative and spoke of the 'enormous potential' that the entire region held for the ICT initiatives.

Ahern said the visit to India by the Irish delegation that began from Bangalore yesterday, had 'particular significance' and referred to the close and historic ties between the two countries.

Speaking about similarities between India and Ireland, he said his country, for the past few years, had been one of the fastest growing economies of the West because of IT and so had India been growing. India, he said, was acknowledged as a key R and D destination and Ireland too was similarly driven by quality education.

GeSCI top officials said it would partner with Rajasthan government for implementing Rajasthan Education Initiative and was also in talks with other states, including Karnataka, for assisting in e-schools programmes. Its plans include setting up of a Global Innovation Centre in India.

Karnataka Chief Minister N Dharam Singh said the state government was taking steps to increase the supply of talent pool required by the knowledge economy.

At the function, GeSCI also signed with Nasscom and MAIT two MoUs that provide framework for close collaboration between GeSCI and the Indian ICT industry for promoting developmental and educational goals using ICTs, and catalysing specific projects and programmes like the Global Innovation Centre.

NASSCOM President Kiran Karnik and MAIT Southern Region Chairman Sanjay Handu and GeSCI Executive Director Stephen Nolan signed the MoUs.

Aruna Sundararajan, Country Programme Director, GeSCI, India, told reporters later that the MoUs provide a framework for working in areas of common interest, noting that both NASSCOM and MAIT had interest in increasing IT penetration.

The collaboration would, among others, look at specific IT platforms and products, which could be used in the education sector. The MoUs were generic framework for cooperation and specifics would be defined later. On the Global Innovation Centre, she said it was in the conceptual stage.

She said GeSCI would sign an MoU with Rajasthan government tomorrow and pointed out that Rajasthan had taken a big lead in launching initiatives to transform the education scenario.