‘e-Sri Lanka’ shines at Future Gov Asia 2010

ICTA wins three awards for best ICT Projects in the world

Three innovative ICT Projects under the e-Sri Lanka initiative created history at the Asia’s acclaimed Future Gov 2010 event in Malaysia this week.

ICTA stood tall by setting a new record on more counts than one when it won three awards for its Government ICT innovative projects at the awards presentation held at Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia.

Judged by a seven-member committee of senior officials and technologists chaired by Future Gov Asia Managing Director James Smith, the Lanka Gate Project made ICTA the ‘Public Sector Organisation of the Year’ among SAARC countries.

According to the Future Gov Asia award organising committee, the award recognises the administrative excellence of the Sri Lankan Government in the SAARC region.

Rising above the regional category as the leader out of the group comprising India, Bangladesh Afghanistan, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal and Pakistan, ICTA also made its mark in two subject categories.

While the Sri Lanka Gov SMS Portal won for ICTA the Asia Pacific award under the Service Innovation category, ICTA’s Nenasala Project, brainchild of President Mahinda Rajapaksa bagged the award under the Digital Inclusion category.

“The Nenasala Project secured the award due to its excellence in the use of technology to bridge the digital divide,” Professor P.W. Epasinghe, Chairman of ICT Agency said.

“The award given in consideration of the Sri Lanka Gov SMS Portal recognises the excellence of innovation in the Sri Lanka Government’s service to the people,” he added.  

For this fourth annual Asia Pacific government technology awards event held under 22 categories parallel to the Future Gov Summit, there were 869 nominations from 16 countries compared with about 620 nominations last year.

“It is significant that ICTA and the Ministry of Public Administration and Security of Korea are the only two organisations that have won the highest number of awards at the FutureGov 2010,” Reshan Dewapura, Chief Operating Officer of ICTA said.

“It is noteworthy that ICTA has set this record of winning three awards amidst countries of the Oceania category, including Australia and New Zealand, countries of the Middle East category like Egypt, North Asian countries like China and Japan and countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations,” he pointed out.

Referring to the awards that have made ICTA set new records, Dewapura said that winning awards was not new to Sri Lanka. However, the reason behind the great strides in the ICT sector that are being made is the concept contained in the ‘Mahinda Chinthana’ and its extended version, the ‘Mahinda Chinthana – Vision for the Future,’ the policy statement of the Government.  

“ICTA as the apex body mandated for providing national guidance in ICT for development and implementing e-Sri Lanka, which is in a nutshell the initiative to make the benefits of ICT accrue to all the people in Sri Lanka, is committed to achieve the targets spelled out in the policy statement,” the ICTA COO asserted.