Websites of Government departments, boards and corporations

Even after 12 years since the establishment of the Information & Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) many government organisations cannot get their websites running effectively and professionally. 

Some of them do not work properly, some do not provide the expected information that the public wishes to view, some have not been updated and several others have incorrect English. For example, the Meteorological Department recently launched a new website which does not work. The ten-day forecast covers a period in May 2016 despite it now being December 2016. A few websites have Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) but they do not provide all the answers. On several websites the English is incomprehensible. Perhaps they believe in the concept of ‘English Our Way’. The links on many websites are wrong or a number of their pages are still under construction. 

Furthermore, why are annual reports missing from these websites? Even when annual reports are present they cover an outdated period.

However, there are several exceptional websites and I suggest that the ICTA examine all of these and get the inferior ones to benchmark against the best features of these sites. Recently Google reported that Sri Lanka held the record for the most number of searches for a particular word. It is possible that the reason for this is that when Sri Lankans find that the Government website does not work or cannot give them the information they are looking for, they get bored and browse for more interesting words. Therefore, if the ICTA can get government websites to work more effectively we will gain another benefit by losing the dubious world record we now hold.

Sunil G Wijesinha

Colombo 5