ICT-led Govt. transformation key to efficient citizen services: ICTA CEO

• FutureGov SAARC Summit betters Sri Lanka’s chance to host prestigious FutureGov Summit

ICT led Government transformation will be the key in delivering efficient citizen services, says ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) CEO Reshan Dewapura in his concluding remarks at the close of Future Gov SAARC Summit 2012 at Cinnamon Grand Hotel Colombo recently.

 “We are strongly entrenched in the belief, that ICT is the future driving force of socio-economic development and that ICT led Government transformation, will be the key in delivering efficient citizen services,” Dewapura affirmed.

In the backdrop of this belief Dewapura commended what looked like an example of putting the summit’s message into practice, namely live voting during the two days of the conference. Using voting devices distributed to participant’s research was carried out ‘on the spot’, so to say. The audience was able to know the answer to research questions related to conference addresses and panel discussions within about 30 seconds after the question was put to them. They could know the percentagewise answers of their peers in the audience to the questions posed.  The voting device was used to carry out the near instant survey both with regard to general questions and rating of presentations. Tokens of appreciation were also presented to speakers, moderators of panels, and those who had worked very hard for the success of the Summit.

“We have had two fruitful and useful days of information exchange, driven by a top line-up of speakers, a very interactive audience, not to mention the live voting. The live voting brought in a new innovation to the summit; all this has gone a great way, to share the best practices in modernising the Government machinery,” Dewapura said.

Hosting prestigious FutureGov Summit in near future    

In what seemed to be a parallel to the pledge made at the conclusion of FutureGov Forum 2011 alluded to by Dewapura in his opening remarks the previous morning (18 July) ICTA CEO said, “We are thankful to Future-Gov again, for partnering with us. I’m sure the continued successes of these events in Sri Lanka, augur well for the future in the success of the Government modernisation journey that we are all involved in. Such partnering and these successes will add more weight to our claim to host the prestigious Future-Gov Summit in the near future.”

In the opening remarks in the morning of the first day of the FutureGov SAARC Summit 2012 Dewapura had said, “At the conclusion of the FutureGov Forum last year, we made a pledge to elevate the profile of the FutureGov Forum Sri Lanka 2011 to a higher level.  The idea then was to have something in the form of a FutureGov Congress, with a number of foreign participants from the region. We are delighted that we have been able to do even one better, and host a fully fledged FutureGov SAARC Summit in Sri Lanka this year.

Judging from Sri Lanka’s past the target to host the FutureGov Summit placed before it at the conclusion of the FutureGov SAARC Summit 2012, is within the country’s reach.