The catalyst of growth in the nation’s knowledge economy, the Sri Lanka Association for Software and Services Companies (SLASSCOM), recently launched a university-level skill development initiative, encompassing all state and private higher education institutes. This initiative was launched to promote collaboration between the industry and academia, with the aim of producing skilled and future ready IT talent that will help take the industry to the next level.
As a part of this initiative, SLASSCOM signed a University Cooperation Agreement with pioneering higher education solutions provider Asia Pacific Institute of Information Technology (APIIT).
The University Cooperation Agreement is an important part of SLASSCOM’s journey of building Sri Lanka’s IT talent in tandem with universities and other tertiary education providers, to deliver the Island of Ingenuity (IOI) brand promise to local and international stakeholders, by embedding its value proposition, capabilities and competencies on students.
The agreement was virtually signed between SLASSCOM Chairperson Sandra De Zoysa and APIIT CEO Roshan Egodage, after which the parties moved on to discussing future steps and collaborative initiatives.
Commenting on the partnership, SLASSCOM Chairperson Sandra De Zoysa said: “Focusing on capacity building for software engineering is one of the fundamental goals of SLASSCOM that is further highlighted by the need to promote and build the industry’s IOI brand. With this agreement we look forward to exploring what we can creatively do together to empower the next generation of ICT professionals in our country.”
Dr. Priyantha Kumarawadu, Head of the School of Computing at APIIT added, “as a leading private higher education institution focussed on developing quality and industry-ready graduates, this partnership with SLASSCOM is both a timely and strategic venture and we are optimistic that it will enable the diffusion of creativity and innovation through knowledge exchange and collaboration, benefiting both students and staff”.
The collaboration also brings to the table the combined expertise of the two parties. SLASSCOM’s Quality Forum has been dedicated to uplifting the talent, skill and capacity of Sri Lanka’s youth and have carried out multiple initiatives including university reach programmes, quality (QA) webinars promoting emerging quality practices, and initiatives on increasing collaboration between QA professionals, whilst APIIT is renowned for contributing over 1,500 high-quality graduates to the ICT/BPM industry and working with industry bodies to build capacity in the Software Quality Engineering domain via training programmes, seminars, webinars and other initiatives. Both parties will therefore utilize their collaborative expertise to work together to foster closer ties between academia and industry, with the aim of increasing the output of high quality, industry-ready graduates required by the ICT/BPM industry of Sri Lanka.
The first initiative planned through this collaboration will be the inculcation of the IOI brand proposition into APIIT’s academic curricula to align it with industry demand and developments while covering in-depth and emerging tech content, thereby bridging the employability gap.
As the national chamber for the IT/BPM industry, SLASSCOM is a dedicated body of industry professionals and 300+ member companies, who work on driving its vision of increasing the ICT/BPM industry export revenue up to US$ 5 billion and create 200,000 workforce and establishing 1,000 start-ups by year 2025. SLASSCOM is supported in their initiatives by their Corporate Sponsor Dialog Enterprise.