An Engineering Future

The IESL Council Election for the 2017/2018 Session is making history as the first widely deployed and locally organized public election with online electronic voting. While many international professional organizations such as ACM and IEEE have provided their members with e-Voting for many years, 2017 marks a historic event as IESL Council Election is the first election that is fully managed by a local election committee led by a Chief Returning Officer with e-Voting technical services obtained from one of the leading international companies. In Lowry and Vora (2009), a comprehensive definition of required and desirable features of an electronic and/or online election system is given. Main among these features are Ballot Secrecy,  Usability,  Accessibility,  Incoercibility,  Deniability,  Voter-verifiable Ballot-casting,  Universally-verifiable Tally-processing,  Voter-auditable Ballot-casting, and  Publicly-auditable Voting-process. The electronic voting system

Undoubtedly, for any organization, accountability and transparency are two of the most important attributes to have in all its activities. For professional organizations of the caliber of IESL, this importance is doubly so. I have submitted two member resolutions for the forthcoming IESL AGM in that spirit. Please participate at the IESL AGM on Saturday, 28th October 2017 and express your views on this resolution and support its adoption.

The IESL has garnered significant responsibilities in recent years in fulfilling its mission to promote, protect and develop the profession of engineering in Sri Lanka. Key among these achievements are the full Washington Accord Accreditor status (in 2014) for 4 year engineering degree programs, provisional Sydney Accord Accreditor status for 3 year engineering degree programs (in 2017), and as sole representative of Chartered Engineers in the Engineering Council setup under the Engineering Council, Sri Lanka Act, No. 4 of 2017. Invariably, such powers of the IESL will require the Institution to have greater transparency in its actions. Towards achieving that objective, the IT & Communications Engineering Sectional Committee of the IESL is sponsoring a resolution at the IESL AGM 2017 on the Right to Information Act. Please participate at the IESL AGM on Saturday, 28th October 2017 and express your views on this resolution and support its adoption.

The Republic of Rwanda with a GDP of $2,090 (in 2016 and PPP adjusted) and ranking 159th in the HDI (Human Development Index) is a small country in East Africa (in comparison, Sri Lanka with a PPP adjusted GDP of $13,012 ranks 73rd in HDI). Historically, the schools in Rwanda were established and run by religious bodies but since 2000, the government has invested heavily in public education. This has resulted in nearly one third of the schools being publicly funded, a compulsory twelve-year basic education, a school feeding program, and major improvements in teaching infrastructure and capacity. The outcome of this progressive government policy in education has been a shift of student enrollments from private schools to public schools and many private schools facing the possibility of closure. The ensuing uncertainty has caused the owners of private schools to request the Rwandan government to support their continued operation. Reference: http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/r

An article in The New York Times draws interesting parallels about top American companies now (like Apple, Google, Facebook) and 30 years ago (Kodak, IBM, AT&T) and provides an important lesson in changes to corporate ethos and their impact on workers. While top companies have always focused on developing innovative technologies, creating highly marketable products, and shaping promotional campaigns towards market dominance, the modern corporations are clinically focused on their core competencies and outsource all other activities. The New York Times article tells the story of Gail Evans who was a janitor in the Kodak Corporation headquarters in Rochester, New York who ultimately ended up as the Chief Technology Officer of the company. Her success story was helped in large measure by the corporate culture of prevalent at the time, which focused on having full-time permanent employees with company support for career development as part of the employment condition. Ms Evans was abl