Provinces united by ICTA

Shirley Wijesinghe

Another 150 government organizations including those in the North Central and Eastern Provinces will be linked through Lanka Government Network (LGN) to facilitate better public service, Information and Communication Technology ( ICTA) Project Director Suranga Jayasuriya told the Daily News yesterday.

Jayasuriya said that ICTA had connected 375 government organizations including Presidential Secretariat, Prime Minister's Office, 46 Cabinet Ministries, five Chief Secretariats, 82 Departments, 13 District Secretariats, 177 Divisional Secretariats, five Chief Secretariats in Western, Southern, Sabaragamuwa and Central Provinces under Phase I of the project.

"This project had been launched through the program re-engineering the public sector organizations. ICTA comes under the direct purview of the Presidential Secretariat aimed at enhancing the existing public service qualitatively and accelerate service efficiency adopting modern IT innovations," he asserted.

He said that the ICTA hopes to rope in three Chief Secretariats, 32 Provincial Ministries, 16 Provincial Departments, five District Secretariats and 94 Divisional Secretariats in the Provinces of Eastern, North Central and North Western under Phase II of the project.

ICTA signed a contract with Samsung Networks Inc. for implementing and managing the LGN-Phase II of the project at ICTA premises recently.

ICTA has also taken steps to gather all information on State-owned lands in the Colombo, Kalutara and Gampaha districts to form a database.

While the computerization of the information on State-owned lands in the Western Province will take place under the project management and technical support of the the re-engineering of public sector organizations of ICTA, the solution will be developed by the School of Computing of the Colombo University.