Sri Lanka to focus on building an open citizen-centric government

The Sri Lankan government needs to respond to changing and varied demands of citizens and businesses, Lalith Weeratunga, Secretary to His Excellency the President, Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka said this morning at the FutureGov Forum Sri Lanka 2011.
“We want to respond swiftly to what citizens want. The Census, for the first time, now covers the entire country, and this will help us better understand the gaps and opportunities of e-government applications,” Weeratunga told 140 distinguished secretaries and senior government decision makers at the second annual forum co-hosted by Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) of Sri Lanka. He anticipated that one of the newer demands would be citizen services delivered via the mobile phone.
The key theme of this Forum, which was in line with Weeratunga’s opening keynote presentation, was inspired by Sigiriya, the world’s eighth wonder and a national pride. Dating back as early as 500 B.C., the Sigiriya ‘mirror wall’ was a place where citizens could write all their views and worries so that their rulers could address them.
“Similar to the Sigiriya, we want to leverage ICT to engage citizens with direct, quick and efficient communication,” commented Reshan Dewapura, CEO of ICTA. “We have ambitious goals of increasing the ICT penetration rate, improving e-governance, exploiting opportunities presented by cloud computing, implementing m-government, e-health initiatives and more.” Weeratunga revealed a number of ongoing and upcoming ICT projects which the Sri Lankan government would be concentrating on. On the economic front, Sri Lanka is building a national data transfer backbone to facilitate the movement of information and promote e-businesses. The expected savings from the reduced cost of communication and administrative work would be re-invested to keep the economy moving at a healthy rate, he added.
The use of ICT in education and health were also highlighted as priorities. “At the moment there is a limited number of e-health applications but the Minister of Health is extremely supportive of our initiative to explore how ICT can help patients and doctors,” shared Weeratunga. “Education institutions in Sri Lanka will look to integrate technology into learning, equip staff, partner with the private sector, share best practices and more.
Other initiatives he brought up included the introduction of an e-voting system and the role of Chief Innovation Officers across the government, whose role will extend beyond IT management to being change agents of best practices.

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