It was presentation to demonstrate concept only: Champika

In response to the information technology professionals’ lashing out at UNP presidential candidate Sajith Premadasa for misleading the public, the Megapolis and Western Development Ministry said the objective of the presentation was to demonstrate the concept of scientific governance to the public.

The Association of Information Technology Professionals said earlier that it was deeply saddened when it saw UNP presidential candidate Sajith Premadasa trying to mislead the public by showing a dashboard which he referred to as an ’’Artificially Intelligent Management Dashboard’’.

In reply to these comments, the Ministry's Megamind organising team said, "In scientific governance, the following aspects are promoted. Collection and analysis of data related to important aspects of the government needing policy and implementation interventions, dashboards showing the raw data and processed information for decision making, use of AI for predicting the consequences after implementing policy decisions."

They further explained that the demonstration used at Megamind was to illustrate the above aspects in consumer affairs, economic growth in tourism and wildlife management. These dashboards were created using a very simple template available on-line.

"Data related in the above areas were displayed as a dashboard in our demonstration and the candidate had a few questions to the subject matter experts in each area. They helped the candidate to understand the data in the dashboard with respect to the decisions to be made. There is no demonstration on driving a vehicle without a driver, diagnosing a patient and suggesting the treatments by a robot. This is completely incorrect reporting.

"As a policy, future governments should use these concepts in management. This is a multi-year, sizable project, needing the support of many organisations and professionals. We appeal to all IT professionals in the country to come together without any political alignment, to create technology driven management.

"Professionals carrying narrow political agenda have hitherto hampered the implementation of scientific management policy and technology driven management in the country. The need of the hour is to align with the policy and support its implementation rather than arguing and criticising minor details."