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Let us build a Smart Mauritius

52em lane Lindepandans ek 28em lane Repiblik Moris

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Today is a wonderful day. Our country, Mauritius, is celebrating its 52 years of Independence and 28 years of being a Republic. That’s a tremendous achievement which we can all be very proud of, especially our grand-parents and parents who worked hard to make Mauritius what it is today: a reference for the region. Despite our humble beginnings 52 years ago, the country has come a long way and I am looking forward to further developments (provided we address the big issue of a lack of quality and competent people at the right places).

I was looking forward to be at Champ de Mars today for the official ceremony and subsequent concert. You see, since I became a Senior Adviser in Government three years ago, I have received an official invitation to be in the official stand but, up to now, I’ve always respectfully declined. The reason was, of course, that I was the only one invited and not my wife and my two kids. And, for me, celebrating independence without them didn’t feel right.

Since the kids were very young, Christina and I made it a must to celebrate Independence with them by being in the crowd at Champ de Mars. This allowed all of us to feel as belonging in a beautiful nation together with myriads of other people of different colours, beliefs and provenance. The above photo dates from 2011 when Anya was 8 and Kyan 6.

In 2012, from the crowd, we witnessed a wonderful and quite breathtaking display from the Groupement d’Intervention de la Police Mauricienne (GIPM) whose members regularly train with their French counterparts. We were quite proud of our little country and its people.

In 2013, Anya was the photographer and she took hundred of photos with her brand new digital camera (which, unfortunately, would die a few weeks later when she forgot it outside and our dog, Kiki, made a mess of it). Anya was 10 and Kyan 8.

In 2014, we had a wonderful display from the various sections of the Police Force and the kids were especially proud to be able to pose in front of the boat used by the Marine Commandos. To be honest, I didn’t even know such a unit existed but I suppose that they are the ones who intercept all those boats and skippers trying to bring in drugs from abroad.

2015 was wonderful as well and I managed to convince Kyan to climb on a Police vehicle. Christina and I were happy to note that both Kyan and Anya were growing up as true patriots: they were proud of our country and understood that they would be among the ones contributing to its development when they would be bigger.

In 2016, Christina was delighted to watch the majorettes of Queen Elizabeth College where she was a student in the 80s and 90s. The girls were very good and cause quite an impression on Anya and Kyan.

In 2017, Mauritius celebrated its 50th anniversary and the celebrations at Champ de Mars were impressive. For this wonderful milestone, I was invited by MBC to say “50 Fraz pou 50 an Lindepandans” on national TV.

But, on 12 March, it was raining quite hard and we had some difficulties seeing everything from the crowd. A lot of people were complaining. The photo of the display by the motorcycle riders of the Mauritian Police Force is of my phone which we had to use to see the display from above because, from where we were (i.e. in the crowd), we could’t understand what was happening. In addition to the rain and the fact that our viewpoint was bad, there was also the issue of my parents who were getting older and could only walk with some difficulty.

It is only then that I started realising that, maybe, things could be made better for the enthusiastic crowd of Mauritians not having official invitations (i.e. the 99.9% of people of the country).

We went again in 2018 with members of the family and it was a nice experience. We didn’t see much but we were just happy to be together carrying the beautiful flag of Mauritius.

In 2019, Christina, the kids, my parents and I decided not to go to Champ de Mars as we were renovating our house and it would have been tough to leave everything aside as works needed to be done on the day. But, in some ways, we were a bit relieved as well as it had become increasingly hard for us to see anything, especially when it rains.

A few days ago, Christina, who now has a knee condition, and the kids have been telling me that they were not very keen to go but I was adamant that I would be there, in the official stand and maybe for a last time because the future can be full of surprises… For the very first time in nearly a decade, I would be at Champ de Mars without my wife and my kids.

If only I knew that I wouldn’t be able to see the 2020 edition as it has been cancelled by the Prime Minister due to bad weather prevailing these days in Mauritius.

Anyway, to all of you, let me wish you a very happy “52em lane Lindepandans ek 28em lane Repiblik Moris”.

Mwa mo kontan mo Moris, mo zoli pei :-)

Computer and Information Security are key to the Digital Transformation of Mauritius

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On Thursday 16 January 2020, I did a presentation on the “Privacy Aspects of ICT Projects” during a conference organised by the Data Protection Office of the Ministry of Technology, Communication and Innovation. A few days prior to the conference, while I was reflecting on what I was going to say, I had an intuition: Mauritius will have to undergo a profound digital transformation at all levels: government, companies, schools and individuals, if we want to attain Vision 2030.

This is why I decided to start my presentation by explaining to the audience what Vision 2030 means. I am always quite amazed, during the various talks I make, that only a few people know about this vision of the Government which was first mentioned by the then Prime Minister on 22 August 2015. Today, Vision 2030, which is about making Mauritius an inclusive high-income country well before 2030, is what dictates the various strategies and actions being done by Government.

For me, the best way to be a high-income country and thus reach the status of Smart Mauritius is by our business entities, the conglomerates but also the SMEs including startups, getting more revenue. Given the limited size of the Mauritian market, this needs to be done through the development of new products and new services for new markets (especially the African market). This is why Government is investing massively in Smart Infrastructure, Smart Mobility and Smart Education, etc.

Now, to create new products and new services (in any field) and conquer new markets, one has to use technology to the full whether one requires a tried-and-trusted technology like Linux or the latest fashionable thing such as Artificial Intelligence.

A lot of organisations have realised that technology in 2020 is about software. Software is eating the world after all. Our organisation, be it in Government or our companies, will have to either implement or develop software. It’s no wonder that 2/3 of the job offers on the LinkedIn website in 2018 were for software engineers (15% for IT people and 15% for data science people).

Now, the software needs to be trusted by all users, especially the ones giving their personal data. Therefore, making sure that the software respects the requirement of the Mauritian Data Protection Act or the European General Data Protection Regulations is key for the organisation to be trusted. Privacy has become so important that an organisation which acquires a reputation of not protecting the data of its clients or users is essentially moribund…

How can we implement or develop software which collects and processes personal data (as provided by users and clients) and which offers all guarantees that the privacy of the individual is going to be protected? This is quite a challenge and two technical avenues can be explored: computer security and information security.

Computer security is about the hardware and software aspects: making sure that the principle of security by design is followed from the very beginning (i.e. users only have to have access to the subset of data which they really require and this can be done through the principle of least privilege and proper access control). Then, security measures such as two-factor authentication, encryption, firewalls and intrusion detection mechanisms can be used to secure the infrastructure further. I am quite confident that using something like the Linux operating system for deployment is a great idea (ask Google, Amazon and Facebook!). Interestingly, the last time I used Windows for anything serious was around 2006, 14 years ago. Since then, I’ve been on Linux and macOS and I’m very happy. Of course, it is also important to train users to identify threats and to respond correctly when there is an incident.

I then spoke about information security which, interestingly, is more about the most vulnerable point in IT, the human. The best way to protect the information within an organisation is through the establishment of a good security policy (which needs to be fully understood and followed to the letter by all). It is also important to have physical security for the people and the equipment. This can be a challenge because people move. Laptops and smartphones today contain valuable information, and being so easy to steal, it is important to have a proper asset management system for business continuity. Of course, data needs to be protected (backups, mirroring, etc.) as well as the network.

Underlying everything is making sure that all layers, including all software, respect the requirements of laws such as our own Data Protection Act which mandates that users giving their data can also modify or erase the data afterwards. The law also mandates that the user be informed whenever his data is being collected so that he can give his consent or not. This is quite a challenge from a software development point of view.

Adhering to everything in computer security and in information security is quite difficult, costly and can be a lengthy process. But the reward is more trust and this is only way to get more business and, hence, more income and profit.

As I had been given 20 minutes for the presentation, I could not go into details in everything. I was telling a friend, after the presentation, that, if I was still at Knowledge Seven, I would have maybe created a 30 hour long training on this important topic.

By the way, I didn’t reinvent the wheel. A lot of my presentation was based on what I read online, most notably on Wikipedia which I love.

Thanks to everyone who came to the presentation and I hope you learned a few things. I definitely did while preparing it and doing it. Thanks to @yurit0s for the photo where I am visible.

The Digital Economy: Challenges and Opportunities in Research for Mauritius

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Last week, I was invited to give a presentation on La question du Numérique: Enjeux, défis et perspectives de la recherche pour le dévéloppement socio-économique de Maurice during the Assises de la Recherche organised by l’Université des Mascareignes.

For all the non-French speaking readers of this blog, I meant to say that I was invited to give a speech on The Digital Economy: Challenges and Opportunities in Research for the Socio-Economic Development of Mauritius. This was during the Research Week organised by the University of Mascareignes, one of the four public universities in Mauritius, notable for its affiliations with French universities and for the use of French as the medium of instruction.

I started my presentation with Vision 2030 of the Government which is about transforming Mauritius into an high-income and inclusive country well before 2030. For this vision to become true, a number of growth enablers have been identified:

They are having good infrastructure (Internet, roads, buildings, hospitals, etc.), having good education (the 9-year schooling reforms, free education for undergraduate students in public universities and polytechnics, etc.), good governance, economic integration (or, else, one can forget about inclusiveness…) and, of course, innovation.

We are fortunate to (more or less) have the first four in Mauritius. Concerning innovation, we still have some work to do but things are moving in the right direction thanks to the contribution of startups, incubators and some of the private companies which exist.

Interestingly, Vision 2030 also speaks of six growth sectors, namely: agriculture (sustainable, eco-friendly…), the ocean economy (for food security and tourism), tourism (new products, new markets, new airline routes…), manufacturing (high-tech, new markets…), financial services (regulations, international…) and ICT services (export, skills development, new products…)

At this point, I asked a question to the audience: how many of them were aware of this strategic plan for Mauritius, namely Vision 2030? Only a handful were and I told them that there are two culprits: us (for not having marketed the document properly) and them (for not being curious). Interestingly, we all agreed that this was not very good, hence my focus on writing a few posts on this blog referring to Vision 2030 and giving links to the official documents…

I then talked about the research perspectives. I told them to, first of all, form multidisciplinary teams of researchers and students, identify an important problem in one of the growth sectors, make sure that the problem is a big one instead of being a trivial one and work hard on solving the problem!

Easier said than done obviously. But much needed if we want to transform the country.

I then spent a few minutes talking about essential emerging technologies that they could use to solve the problems identified. I focused on Internet of Things (to collect data with sensors), on databases and blockchains to store data (the latter being for data which should not be tampered with), on analytics (which I like to call statistics) to infer things and on Deep Learning, once again to infer things, but only when the data is too big or too unstructured.

The interesting thing is that a lot of people told me afterwards that I had made this part really easy to understand for them. I’m happy about that.

At the end, I told them a big thank you and that their contribution counts in making the Republic of Mauritius (which includes Rodrigues, Saint Brandon and Agaléga) a better place.