My short keynote message for the IS/MCS Symposium 2021

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, staff and students of IS/MCS departments and sister departments. This is your day final years, and I wish not to bore you to death with another lecture or a lengthy speech written only a few hours ago. Which is kind of true J

But please spare me a couple of minutes to just share with you a few thoughts of mine.

We will continue to witness more of our senior students present what I call the “first fruits” of their aspirations in this interesting journey of curiosity and wonder in an ever changing, technologically advancing, PNG power dependent (pun intended), innovations in ICT for our beautiful country.

Your efforts that have been or will be demonstrated today through the presentations are only just the beginning of you living up to the expected program outcomes of IS, MCS and DWU as your alma mater.

So what are the expectations?

Being part of the workforce of Papua New Guinea as professionals who are competent to assist, and provide leadership in, the use, development and maintenance of electronic digital technology, particularly as it impacts corporate and service sectors of the national economy. And as professionals who are competent to apply mathematical and computing techniques and engage in research in mathematics and computing science.

That to me is what I will call the cake! Yes, the cake. There is a reason why I say this.

There are so many institutions out there baking similar cakes and they taste good too. But you know what makes a good tasting cake even better. The icing! Yes the icing.

So you’re probably thinking now what is the icing on the cake then?

As reflective lifelong learners acting on strongly developed Christian ethical principles, you as IS/MCS IT professionals should display personal qualities of scholarship and citizenship at local, national and international levels as evidenced through your eight graduate attributes you will find in your document. Personal development, communication, social responsibly and others. If you still don’t know those attributes you won’t graduate. That is the icing on the cake for me.

This leads me now to your theme for this symposium: Digital Masking: Love Without Borders

The significance of this theme for me is not in its relationship to the present COVID-19 pandemic we’re experiencing in our region and across the globe. Yes, that is equally important and that may have been the inspiration for the theme. But for me, it’s rather more about the ‘digital pandemic’ or digital dilemma: the irresponsible use of technology to abuse, demoralize, bully, ridicule and the list goes on. Rather than using it to learn, create, participate, communicate meaningfully and productively. There is an almost complete lack of ‘digital citizenship’ that has swept across our country faster than COVID-19 itself.

What is wrong with using technology to work productively, co-operatively, with tolerance, respect and valuing for human diversity, but also with a passionate commitment to truth. We’ve gone from ridiculing a young village girl expressing herself to even the prime minister of the country and we’re not stopping it seems. That is dangerous! That is not the PNG digital environment we should be creating. And that is where I’d like to leave my message to you aspiring IT professionals. Let’s change the narrative. Be that special icing on the cake of your profession, that as you become adept in your IT skills never forget that the love will not be without borders until we become good digital citizens. Thank you!

You can watch the symposium we live-streamed on Facebook here.