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"Plans are now under way to bring about a radical change and improve the quality of Parliament". This was stated by Speaker Joseph Michael Perera, at the inauguration of the Group Learning Centre established at the Parliament under the Distant Education for Public Servants (DEPS) program on Thursday. The Assistant Secretary-General of Parliament Dhammika Dassanayake functions as the group leader at this centre.

The Speaker said, that so far it has been the practice that the staff have risen in their posts based merely on seniority. This situation has arisen as there has been no proper training, no evaluation and no recognition for special ability. "Therefore we hope to introduce an evaluation system in order to improve the quality of Parliamentary staff".

He went on to say that the DEPS program, will give an opportunity to all public servants to gain the necessary knowledge and skills to discharge their duties towards the public more effectively and also be empowered to face the challenges of the future even after retirement. He also said that he hoped to introduce a program to provide IT skills to Parliamentarians soon.

The first phase of the DEPS program is for executive grade public servants and will be extended to middle and lower level public servants in the future. DEPS implemented by Worldview Global Media Ltd. under the auspices of the Ministry of Public Administration, Management and Reforms with funding from NORAD, has already set up 83 such Group Learning Centres islandwide. Groups of 20-25 public servants currently avail themselves of this facility at each centre.

The training is conducted through discussion and debate of issues relevant to their work based on the course modules. DEPS envisages a participatory approach to bring about change towards better development management in public service. In addition to this training, public servants are also provided with basic computer skills at computer training centres already set up at provincial level, under the DEPS project. This would be the first step towards the introduction of e-governance.

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