Enhancing Sri Lanka’s economic landscape with e-governance

By Cassandra Mascarenhas

The National Workshop on the UN e-Government Survey Sri Lanka and FOSS4Gov hosted by the ICTA with the strategic partnership of the United Nations Project Office on Governance (UNPOG) commenced yesterday at the Taj Samudra, focusing attention on three inter-related subjects on the three days on which it will be held.

Featuring several keynote speakers, local and international, lined up for the full day sessions over the three days on which the workshop will be held, it is aimed at improving operational efficiency of public service.

Addressing the full house on the first day, Secretary to the President Lalith Weeratunga urged the Government secretaries present at the forum to further strengthen the Government Information Centre and other websites with regular updates, value added services and increased quality in order to attract further investments to the country.

“I would like to remind the secretaries present here that the regularity at which these websites are updated, value added services and quality will determine where we place on the UN e-government position so you have a huge responsibility as far as the country is concerned. These indices are important because when someone wants to invest in Sri Lanka and come here for a huge project, they look at the Global Competitiveness Index, some of these e-governance index, how ICT is used; in short they want to see is it possible to do business in Sri Lanka with ease,” he explained.

He added that by using the Government Information Centre (GIC), which provides over 300 services, the Government has been able to successfully reach out to those in rural communities who can use a phone and hence seek information and more important services.

“We also have to somehow overcome more hurdles before we reach the status of a country which uses e-governance as one of the key ingredients of the Government. I myself have been very critical about some of the government websites. The UN e-government survey has already informed that they will be assessing 17 ministerial websites in addition to the main Government portal such as the Health Ministry, social services, education, finance, environment and external affairs amongst others.”

His understanding is that e-governance services can be made more accessible to citizens through the mobile platform the penetration of which is ever increasing; from 12 million mobile users in 2009 for a population of nearly 20 million to 17 million in 2011. Weeratunga however is certain that by 2015 almost everyone in Sri Lanka will have a mobile phone.

“Although we want to promote mobile platforms there is one obstacle – that is those who are not English literate will not be able to use them because these handsets are not localised; that will take some time but such services can be offered by telephone or even by radio and through these, people can overcome the computer, internet and language barriers.”

The Secretary to the President also brought up the fact that the country had so far not done very well with internet penetration and called for the problem regarding broadband to be addressed as studies had shown that the broadband capacity provided was far below what providers should be providing; 50 per cent below the capacity that people should actually be receiving.

The UNDP Country Director Douglas Keh also spoke at the inauguration of the three-day conference, extending the support of the UNDP to Sri Lanka.

“The UNDP supports governments in planning for the long term. Our principle goal is to help everyone to develop the capacity to reduce poverty. This entails introducing lessons learned in other parts of the world, sharing international best practices that in this particular case can help address the particular needs of Sri Lanka. This discussion of e-governance is vital as information technology does indeed hold the key for altering and enhancing the economic landscape of this country,” he stated.

He added that although Sri Lanka was currently doing very well, there were many statements that linger on, not so much questions about what opportunities will or will not emerge, rather questions as to how those opportunities can be capitalised – what will bring Sri Lanka to the next chapter in its history, what are the prerequisites for sustainable growth and development and so on and although the end of the war has brought indications of these issues, they still need to be identified and dealt with.

The National Workshop will continue today with a full day of discussions and will end tomorrow with after half a day of sessions. Speakers lined up to share their knowledge and experience include UNPOG Programme Operations Expert S. K. Belal Hassan, ICTA Programme Director Re-engineering Government Wasantha Deshapriya, ICTA Information Infrastructure Programme Head Dil Piyaratne, Telecommunication Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka Consultant Dr. Manoda Gamage, Republic of Korea SangMyung University Prof. Kyoung Y. Bae, Republic of Korea  Ministry of Public Administration and Security Winner of 2011 UN Public Service Award Seok-tae Lee and Republic of Korea, Winner of 2011 UN Public Service Award, INVIL Deputy Director Shin Hoon.