Türkiye Informatics Council to meet after 20-year hiatus

By Arife Yildiz Unal

Preparations are being made for Türkiye Informatics Council to be held once again after 20 years.

Important steps are being taken to position Türkiye in the global economy, where digital transformation and data-driven chains of values have become the new norm, and to achieve the goals of the Century of Türkiye as the “century of the digital,” according to the Digital Transformation Office of the Turkish Presidency.

For these goals to be achieved, the country will make efforts to raise awareness at the national level, including all stakeholders, such as public institutions, the private sector, academia, and non-governmental organizations.

The informatics councils held in 2002 and 2004 became the guiding principle for the country’s efforts with the vision to “strive towards a society of information.”

To address the rapidly developing generations of digital technologies, preparations have begun to organize the third Informatics Council after a hiatus of two decades.

Planned to be held at the end of the year, preparations are handled by working groups formed under six headings from TOBB Software Council of Turkey, TUBISAD Informatics Industry Association, Turkish Informatics Foundation, YASAD Software Manufacturers Association, and BGD Information Security Association, all of which work under the leadership of the Turkish Informatics Association.

- ⁠Tech roadmap for Informatics Council

The coordination and the general organization of the Informatics Council will be carried out by the Digital Transformation Office of the Turkish Presidency.

The topics to be discussed at the Informatics Council include “digital skills and agile workforce harmonization”, “taking a stronger place in the global data economy,” “next-generation sustainable development”, and “digital sovereignty and resilience.”

At the Informatics Council, macro-level goals and policy suggestions will be put forward for 2030 and beyond.

Two phases of workshops have been planned so far for the working groups, and with more than 200 stakeholders participating in three preliminary workshops in the Turkish capital of Ankara, three more workshops will be held in Istanbul.

The secondary workshops to be organized in May under the coordination of informatics NGOs will be carried out later, where a wider range of stakeholders will be reached and informatics-oriented policies and solutions for 2030 will be discussed.

Then, a report will be published by the council, and digital transformation and next-generation technologies will be brought to the agenda, with a road map reflecting the expectations of all parties.

*Writing by Emir Yildirim