Inaugurating the Bangalore IT.COM 2000, the third such annual expo, at Palace Grounds on Wednesday, Mr Pant said, headed by himself the group would have Dr Abdul Kalam, Dr RA Mashelkar, Mr NR Narayana Murthy and Dr Venkatasubramanian as its members.

He said the Information Technology Act 2000 was expected to facilitate growth of e-commerce, electronic communication through Internet and accelerate induction of IT in critical sectors of the economy.

Mr Pant said currently there was a shortage of 300,000 IT professionals in the US alone while Germany and Australia had an immediate requirement of 20,000 and 15,000 IT personnel, respectively.

He said the commission had recently set up a Task Force for Human Resource Development in IT to prepare a long-term strategy for significantly increasing the number of well-trained IT professionals. The force has already drawn up a plan to optimally use the existing infrastructure of the IITs, regional engineering colleges, other engineering institutes to double their student intake from the next accademic year and triple it in the next two years, he said. Speaking on the occasion, US ambassador Richard Celeste said technological growth could be achieved only through partnership between private and public and consumers and producers besides between countries. He said, ``Digital economy contributed over 30 per cent of the economic growth in the US and India too has the potential to reach this level of growth.''

The British minister for e-commerce Patricia Hewitt said the UK was strong in medical imaging, financial service and computing games and was currently concentrating on wireless technolgoy and digital TV revolution.

Describing herself as a ``matchmaker'' between Britain and India, she said a large number of ``successful engagements'' and ``fruitful marriages'' were expected between the countries. The British government was currently working on work permit arragments for Indian enterpreneurs and job seekers who are planning to reach the UK, she said. The country currently had 1 million British-Indians, she said.

Nortel Networks chief operating officer Clarence Chandran said only 15 per cent of the global population provided technology, around 50 per cent of the population used the technology while the rest were still unconnected.In India, three people out 1,000 were connected. Internet penetration in India was expected to grow 10-fold taking the existing 6 million to 62 million by 2005, he said.

Mr Chandran said in India Nortel Networks would work closely with its customers to create high performance Internet infrastructure with a focus on R&D and application. ``We will double our backbone and increase our personnel strength by 500 from the current 1200,'' he said.

Wipro Ltd chairman Azim H Premji said the country required a shared vision involving partners from private, government and educational institutions. ``The private sector can bring in ideas, government can provide infrastructure while educational institutions can bring in talent,'' he said.

Presiding over the function, Karnataka chief minister SM Krishna said his government had recently constituted a committee to issue an order to prescribe a standardised code for Kannada software and keyboard. ``This initiative is expected to help rapid growth of software in Kannada,'' he said. The government would also send the standards to Microsoft chief Bill Gates requesting him to incorporate the standards in the next generation Windows, he said.