Government taps Virtusa to build country-wide web portal

Innovative interface increases Government transparency and promotes accessibility for all

Virtusa Corporation, a global IT services company that offers a broad spectrum of business consulting and outsourcing services, announced that it has developed an innovative Web portal and supporting middleware service integration platform for Sri Lanka’s Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA).  

Part of the Government’s eSriLanka initiative, the Lanka Gate portal reduces costs while improving transparency and empowering traditionally underserved populations through increased access to information and communication tools.  

With various agencies running on different platforms with minimal or no integration, the Government of Sri Lanka recognised the need to provide a standard service platform to facilitate seamless interaction for its citizens, departments, and businesses in a secure, reliable and transparent environment.  

ICTA tapped Virtusa to create a new portal to serve as a primary interface for all users, including citizens, non-citizens, businesses, agents and Government employees.  

Virtusa created the Lanka Gate country portal, as well as an underlying middleware tier called the Lanka Interoperability Exchange (LIX), which allows users to connect to various Government organisations and businesses in Sri Lanka.

Lanka Gate supports the Sinhala, Tamil and English languages, as well as both traditional web and mobile browsing, which increases Government transparency by making information more accessible to a greater number of users.  

Not only did the project dramatically improve user experience, it also reduced costs and improved efficiency by integrating disparate systems and automating processes through workflows and orchestration.  More readily available information has reduced the number of service requests, and integration has led to faster and more accurate service when requests do come in.

As a testament to the success of the platform built by Virtusa, the ICTA was recently honored with the ‘Public Sector Organisation of the Year’ award among South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries at Future Gov Asia held in October, 2010.

“Virtusa has been a true partner throughout the creation of Lanka Gate and the Lanka Interoperability Exchange and was instrumental in translating the eSriLanka vision into an innovative product for our citizens, businesses and government agencies,” said Reshan Dewapura, CEO of ICTA.

“We’re excited about the recognition the portal has received and look forward to continuing to work with Virtusa to improve how the government of Sri Lanka uses technology to better connect with people and businesses. Through the Cabinet approved e-Government Policy it has now been made mandatory for all government organisations to use Lanka Gate for electronic service delivery and the Country Portal has been identified as the government’s single window for electronic service delivery.”

Kris Canekeratne, Chairman and CEO of Virtusa, said, “We are proud to partner with ICTA to build the ‘e’ vision for Sri Lanka. Our expertise is in building transformational solutions that accelerate time-to-market and improve the consumer experience. The Lanka Gate portal is a prime example of the type of project that requires a unique combination of technical expertise, user experience innovation and strong execution. Whether they’re government organisations or businesses, whether in North America, Europe or Asia, our teams develop award winning solutions that connect consumers to critical on-line services.”

The Virtusa solution is based on a robust Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) platform that uses open standards, frameworks and protocols to allow different businesses to meet unique requirements with minimal impact on their existing systems.  The service is flexible so that it can be extended to any protocol in the future as needs change.