ICTA focuses on making more eServices accessible to the poorest
Dedicated to bringing the dividends of ICT to every citizen, ICTA
gives top priority to making e-Services accessible to the poorest, ICTA
Re-engineering Govt.Programme Director Wasantha Deshapriya said.
Deshapriya said so during a presentation at the National IT
conference 2011 held in Colombo recently.
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Wasantha Deshapriya |
Elaborating on the subject under the title “Sri Lankan e-Government
picture; where is the bottom of the pyramid (BoP)” Deshapriya
highlighted the problem and ICTA’s measures for solving it. With the aid
of statistics the ICTA Re-engineering Government Programme Director made
the audience including IT experts alive to the pressing status quo of
the poorest.
If we consider the population of Sri Lanka as a pyramid, 23 percent
of the people are at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) (Department of
Census and Statistics). The individual monthly income of BoP was below
the poverty line which was accepted to be Rs 3400. Ten percent of the
population of Sri Lanka have no internet facilities while 12 percent
have no computers. Seventy-five percent are ICT illiterate.
Having given the picture of the BoP, Deshapriya elaborated on what
ICTA has done and was in the process of doing to arrest the problem and
improve the quality of life of the poorest.
Speaking about solutions to the problem Deshapriya opened the up the
rays of hope : “Telephone penetration is breaking all barriers with
12,000,000 recorded as early as 2009 and becoming a tool even for BoP to
improve their quality of life”.
“We are doing a Proof of Concept (PoC) to utilize the popularity of
GIC and mobile payments to provide “Transactional Services” to BoP”,
Deshapriya said giving a glimpse of what great things were in store for
the BoP in the Sri Lankan e-Government picture.
Parallel to the massive mobile phone penetration, Deshapriya said the
(Government Information Centre) GIC [1919] receives over 1 million
calls per year from citizens to get informational service as proved by
1200000 calls recorded in 2010.
GIC has already begun to bridge the gap by becoming a “Digital
Intermediary” to provide Emerging Information Services” and Interactive
Information Services” to BoP. Train Schedule and Foreign job
opportunities are two services which have the highest demand so far.
This information is available in the web as well as through GN.SMS.
So GIC gets more calls for these two services, Deshapriya underlined.
Corroborating his disclosures Deshapriya gave the following data with
regard to the Web vs SMS vs Voice calls for June 2011:-
More and more interactive information services are being added to GIC
everyday.
The projects ICTA has initiated for making public service more
people-friendly fall into two major categories. They are enabler
projects and e-Services projects.
Among the enabler projects are (a) Lanka Government Network with 475
organizations already connected (b) Lanka Gate and Country Portal which
provides ‘all-in-one’ platform for offering e-services through a
complete free and open source set-up including Credit Card Gateway, SMS
Gateway and Lanka Interoperability Exchange (c) ICT Human Resource
Development with 14,027 already equipped with General and 959 endowed
with Management and Technical ICT skills and 150 MBAs in e-Government
and (e) Policy and standards which is concerned with the e-Government
policy, Lanka Interoperability standards, LIFE (Lanka Interoperability
Framework and Sri Lanka Web standards (www.emathumozhihal.lk).
Among the e-Service projects are (1) Informational e-Services with
the flagship project Government Information Centre (GIC) [1919] , (2)
Interactive e-Services which includes ‘Find your Government Officer’,
Train schedule, Foreign Employment Opportunities, and Crop Prices
e-Services (3) Transactional e-Services including utility payments and
‘Visa online’ and (4) Connected Government e-Services in which category
the most popular e-Sevice is the e-Revenue Licence e-Service which
enables a person to get the revenue licence of his vehicle without the
hassle of physically visiting the relevant office(s).
Currently this service has entailed cooperation with 40 Divisional
Secretariats the Central DMT, Provincial DMT, 12 Insurance Companies,
and Two Emission Testing Companies.
The concept of E-service (short for electronic service), represents
one prominent application of utilising the use of Information and
communication technologies (ICTs) in different areas.
All agree about the role of technology in facilitating the delivery
of services which make them more of electronic services. Such e-service
includes the service element of e-tailing, customer support, and service
delivery”. This definition reflect three main components- service
provider, service receiver and the channels of service delivery (i.e.,
technology).
For example, as concerned to public e-service, public agencies are
the service provider and citizens as well as businesses are the service
receiver. The channel of service delivery is the third requirement of
e-service.
Internet is the main channel of e-service delivery while other
classic channels (e.g. telephone, call center, public kiosk, mobile
phone, television) are also considered.
Being the apex body responsible for implementing the ‘e-Sri Lanka’
Initiative, ICTA tries to use ICT to develop the economy, reduce poverty
and improve the quality of life of the people. In this endeavour ICTA ,
has paid much attention to the use of ICT to improve the delivery of
Government services to the citizens of the country.
In fulfilling one of its major mandates, namely, Re-engineering
Government, ICTA has adopted two strategies in parallel: (i) the
re-engineering and automation of Government services and (ii)
installation of tele-centres (community internet access centres or
Nenasalas [wisdom outlets]) for citizens, inter alia, to access
re-engineering Government “e-Gov” services.
The projects ICTA has initiated for making public service more
people-friendly fall into two major categories. They are enabler
projects and e-Services projects.
Among the enabler projects are (a) Lanka Government Network with 475
organizations already connected (b) Lanka Gate and Country Portal which
provides ‘all-in-one’ platform for offering e-services through a
complete free and open source set-up including Credit Card Gateway, SMS
Gateway and Lanka Interoperability Exchange (c) ICT Human Resource
Development with 14,000 equipped with General and 1400 endowed with
Management and Technical ICT skills and 150 MBAs in e-Government and (e)
Policy and standards which is concerned with the e-Government policy,
Lanka Interoperability standards, LIFE (Lanka Interoperability Framework
and Sri Lanka Web standards (www.emathumozhihal.lk).
Among the e-Service projects are (1) Informational e-Services with
the flagship project Government Information Centre (GIC) [1919] , (2)
Interactive e-Services which includes ‘Find your Government Officer’,
Train schedule, Foreign Employment Opportunities, and Crop Prices
e-Services (3) Transactional e-Services including utility payments and
‘Visa online’ and (4) Connected Government e-Services in which category
the most popular e-Sevice is the e-Revenue Licence e-Service which
enables a person to get the revenue licence of his vehicle without the
hassle of physically visiting the relevant office(s).
Web vs SMS vs Voice Calls for June, 2011
Web hits SMS GIC calls
Railway schedule 456 30 10947
Foreign employment 315 No SMS 5646
ID card application status 274 3402 No service |
