‘President gave unprecedented leadership for ICT4D’

By Athula Pushpakumara

“President Mahinda Rajapaksa gave a firm and stable, yet unprecedented leadership, to a well coordinated process to do the unbelievable”, President’s Secretary Lalith Weeratunga stated this when he addressed the FutureGov Sri Lanka 2010 in Colombo recently as the Guest of Honour.

President’s Secretary Lalith Weeratunga  addressing the FutureGov Sri Lanka 2010 conference held recently

Addressing about 300 local and international top enthusiasts in using ICT for people-friendly Government, assembled at Continental Hotel in Colombo, Weeratunga explained that the President had attained several unbelievable achievements. These included the ending of the 30-year war, empowering even the remote villager as entrepreneur and part of the Government by using ICT4 development, and putting the country on the path to become the ‘Wonder of Asia’.

 

Sharing his views at this 13th regional FutureGov forum the Secretary to the President   emphasised that the President was the moving force of Sri Lanka’s success in ICT4development:

 “The President has been the pillar of strength in our ICT success.  The President established a Presidential Task Force for English and IT with a mandate to increase ICT literacy of our people, which now stands at around 30%.  Six years ago, it stood below 5%.  The President’s vision has enabled rural folk to access ICT learning opportunities and use Internet through the Nenasalas (wisdom outlets), the award winning rural telecentre network.  There are many more ICT success stories where President Mahinda Rajapaksa has been the conceptualiser and the driving force.  In fact, Nenasala was born out of his thinking.  The ICT Agency and its ‘e-Sri Lanka’ programme operate under the purview of the President because real change can only be achieved in areas such as ICT for development, only if the Head of State gives the whole process, leadership”.

Referring to the President’s courage in leading the nation to reach seemingly unbelievable postwar targets after having won the ‘unbelievable victory in war, Weeratunga said:

“It is also our President’s vision to double the current per capita income by 2016 as enunciated in the ‘Mahinda Chinthana – A brighter future’, which was also his election manifesto in 2010.   The President’s vision envisages making Sri Lanka the “Wonder of Asia”— a dynamic global hub under five themes: maritime, aviation, knowledge, commerce and power and energy. The ‘e-Sri Lanka’ programme with the active participation of the private sector tremendously benefits all these five areas.  Colombo is now highlighted as an emerging destination for finance and accounting, legal services and software testing.  Sri Lanka is currently ranked 7th among the 50 best emerging global outsourcing cities.

Moving on to explain in more detail how Sri Lankan people’s lives could be made more comfortable by bringing Government closer to them Weeratunga said that he saw four key areas Sri Lanka’s development:

“Infrastructure development and knowledge-based economic development are priorities of Sri Lanka’s development agenda in which ICT would be used to spur growth and propel socio-economic development of the country.  There are the following four key areas in this :

Citizens as partners of governance through ICT

Commitment of the top-level political leadership for enhancing national competitiveness.

Increased use of ICT to bridge rural-urban divides for improved quality of life.

Making government robust and efficient through Re-engineering Government.

“First of those is, “CITIZENS AS PARTNERS OF GOVERNANCE.”  Majority of the citizens wish that there is the least control by government.  However, it is inevitable that governments have to control, particularly, in areas of national security etc.  Recently governments had to step in when irresponsible financial institutions ruined some of the major economies in the world creating havoc in the lives of ordinary citizens.

 “The second factor is the COMMITMENT OF THE TOP LEVEL POLITICAL LEADERSHIP FOR ENHANCING NATIONAL COMPETITIVENESS.

Why is leadership imperative to introduce and sustain ICT tools in development and governance?  We have a classic case in point with Sri Lanka’s political leadership, that of President Rajapaksa.  Bill Gates in a video address to him said,

“Sri Lanka has an advantage though, with a government that’s committed to investing further in IT, as outlined in President Rajapaksa’s vision statement. Like President Rajapaksa, I am optimistic that the country is poised for greater economic growth and development, and much of that will be fueled by the use of software and the power of IT”.

 “The third area is the INCREASED USE OF ICT TO BRIDGE RURAL-URBAN DIVIDE FOR IMPROVED QUALITY OF LIFE.   Key agents of Sri Lanka’s economy, especially the service sector, have concentrated largely on the Western Province.  

The notion that the highest contribution to the GDP comes from the Western Province and that therefore ICT development must concentrate more in this province has since 2005 changed considerably. Our President’s sincere belief that it’s the rural areas that need more facilities and infrastructure development and that the contribution of the rural folk towards food production will largely determine the stability of the nation has paid dividends. That’s why the devastating global food crisis did not affect Sri Lanka.

Therefore, quite rightly, the need for equity has been given high emphasis under the ‘e-Sri Lanka’ development model to bridge the rural-urban divide especially to access opportunities towards high quality of life.  

The fourth key area of importance and of intervention that would spur growth and ensure economic development is MAKING GOVERNMENT ROBUST AND EFFICIENT THROUGH RE-ENGINEERING GOVERNMENT.

 “Here too, the vision of our country’s leader has been instrumental in the massive and unprecedented development we are experiencing.   President Rajapaksa upon assumption of office in 2005 articulated that the bureaucracy should not inconvenience people and that the public service as a whole needed a paradigm shift to become citizen friendly and courteous.  Thus the idea was born for the GIC (1919).  We wanted as per our President’s directive, to minimize citizens’ visits to government organizations. That is why we established the Government Information Centre with the short dialing code 1919.

The time saving applications definitely help them to engage in economic activities without wasting time to travel physically to offices to obtain information.  More and more eGov applications are now on the pipeline to serve citizens and businesses. The electronic payment facility using credit cards and mobile phones has been introduced recently under LankaGate project. This special middleware has opened its doors to all public and semi-government organizations. The Lanka Government Network (LGN) covers a large range of government organizations. Many common applications and agency-specific ICT solutions are developing rapidly and are being launched regularly. Divisional Secretariats – the grassroots level public service delivery agencies and local government agencies are among them. The final objective is to let people feel that they are being governed by themselves under a ‘seamless government’ sans all barriers created in the history by default or otherwise.”