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Smith School
Co-Sponsors eLeadership
Conference with World Bank
In June, the University of
Maryland/Smith School and co-sponsors
(the World Bank Institute, the U.S.
Agency For International Development,
Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Cisco, and
Avaya) welcomed leaders from around the
globe to a workshop focused on
identifying the intellectual and
conceptual underpinnings and skills
profile for a new type of development
executive, the E-Leader.
 The
conference was successful, said Sandy
Boyson, one of the organizers. "We had
IT policy executives and thought leaders
from 15 countries including China,
Vietnam, Singapore, India, Brazil,
Chile, Mexico, and Russia."
Three types of executives from
developing countries attended the
workshop, explained Boyson: senior
public sector executives responsible for
making nation-wide IT strategy and
investment decisions, CIO-level
executives responsible for creating
policy and organizational strategies,
and executives responsible for
implementing large-scale technology
systems; for example, the automation of
government functions such as business
permits and land registries.
 The
conference was the result of a long term
effort by the World Bank to promote
e-development: the use of information
communications technology to advance
social and economic development. Nagy
Hanna , one of the conference organizers
who served as the World Bank's senior
e-development advisor until this past
spring when he retired and joined the
University of Maryland as a senior
research fellow, has been working since
1990 on this issue. Hanna and Boyson
have co-authored two monographs for the
World Bank on this subject. Three years
ago Hanna commissioned the Smith School
to conduct a MBA Consulting Project to
determine how to best educate
e-development leaders, and the resulting
report served as inputs to the
e-leadership workshop held last month at
the World Bank headquarters in
Washington, D.C., and the Smith School.
The workshop aimed to integrate three
perspectives: e-strategy,
including the presentation of a strawman
teaching module led by Hanna;
e-management, led by Montgomery
County, Md., CIO Alisoun Moore; and
e-technology led by Boyson. The
approach was multi-disciplinary,
covering development economics,
political economy, strategy, leadership,
management science, and technology
management, among others.
 Boyson
(pictured, right) worked with
Anil Agarwal from Sun, Jaijit
Bhattacharya from Oracle and Bernie
Mazer from USAID on the e-technology
module, where the 40 participants
visited the Smith School and the
Netcentric Supply Chain Laboratory.
Boyson and his team demonstrated the
latest RFID technology, including how
sensors on a buoy at sea could activate
a national warning system for a tsunami.
Scott Koerwer, associate dean for
executive education, entrepreneurship
and marketing communications at Smith,
introduced the sessions at Smith and
described the workshop as, "Education
and business coming together to support
the global marketplace."
The Smith School thanks
representatives from participating
countries, including: Brazil, Chile,
China, Egypt, Ghana, India, Jordan,
Mexico, Russian Federation, Singapore,
South Korea, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam.
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