The 27th board meeting of Ignite (Formerly National ICT R&D Fund), an organization of Ministry of IT, was chaired by Minister of State for Information Technology Ms. Anusha Rahman. The board discussed the annual budget of Ignite (Formerly National ICT R&D Fund) for FY 2013-14 and reviewed the progress of the ongoing projects of the Fund and ordered closure of those projects that have not shown any progress in view of the monitoring committee of the R & D Fund.
The Minister emphasized the need to revise the existing telecom policy, pending review for a few years now and tasked R & D Fund to facilitate and assist in preparing recommendations for the Telecom Policy before the upcoming spectrum auction.
The Minister directed that Ignite (Formerly National ICT R&D Fund) should be spent on targeted Centers of Excellence, especially for Broadband Access Technologies and Next Generation Networks. It was also decided that Ignite (Formerly National ICT R&D Fund) should re-initiate research in URL Filtering. She also emphasized on the need for review of R&D Implementation Framework for the next 10 years.
