Yasas V. Abeywickrama elected President of SEARCC

President of the Computer Society of Sri Lanka, Yasas V. Abeywickrama, has been elected President of the South East Asia Regional Computer Confederation (SEARCC).

SEARCC is a forum of national Information Technology professional societies in the Asia Pacific region. It was started in 1978 and it aspires to be the key collaborative body for national ICT professional associations in the Asia Pacific region, helping its members and the ICT industry in the region prosper and grow.

The SEARCC/NITC 2017 Conference recently concluded in Colombo which combined the regional SEARCC conference, drawing delegates from across Asia, the Pacific and Europe together with the annual National IT Conference (NITC) for Sri Lanka.  

As is customary, the conference concluded with the transfer of the Presidency to the SEARCC member society hosting the conference. The next SEARCC conference will be hosted by the Computer Society of India (CSI) in 2018.

The concept of a regional computer confederation grew out of the first regional computer conference held in Singapore in September 1976 under the auspices of the International Federation for Information Processing and was implemented by the Singapore Computer Society. The Charter and Constitution of SEARCC were signed in Singapore on 28 February 1978. 

Six national societies from the region, the Hong Kong Computer Society, Indonesian Computer Society, Malaysian National Computer Confederation, Philippines Computer Society, Singapore Computer Society and Computer Association of Thailand were the founding signatories. 

The Australian Computer Society (ACS), Computer Society of the Republic of China (CSROC), Computer Society of India (CSI), South Pacific Computer Society (SPaCS), Malaysian National Computer Confederation (MNCC) and Papua New Guinea are also among the SEARCC Executive Committee members. SEARCC today is the leading confederation of IT professionals throughout the region.