Lanka wins two awards at FutureGov Summit 2012
Sri Lanka won two prestigious awards at the FutureGov Summit 2012
awards ceremony held at the Shangri La hotel in Chiang Mai, Thailand
this week.
The two awards bagged by Sri Lanka come respectively under the
‘eGovernment’ category and the ‘Public Sector Organisation of the Year’
category. The ‘eGovernment’ award was for the Electronic Travel
Authorisation (ETA), or Visa Online of the Sri Lankan Department of
Immigration and Emigration. The ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) played a
major role in this award-winning project - ‘Visa Online’ - by linking
the Lanka Gate Internet Payment Gateway (IPG) for making online
payments.
The ‘Public Sector Organisation of the Year’ category award was won
by the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka. This is the latest instance of Sri Lanka
winning FutureGov Summit awards during the last three years. The two
previous awards were for ‘Lanka Gate’ in 2010 and ‘ePensions in 2011.
FutureGov Summit has gathered together Asia Pacific’s public sector
leaders to discuss the role of technology in enabling service
transformation. Hosted by FutureGov magazine, and backed by FutureGov
Research, the Summit uniquely brings together top officials from central
government, city administration, and hospital management. The topics
that the world Government Organisation top leaders mostly belonging to
the Asia Pacific region considered at the three-day summit (Oct17-19 )
included the following: Digital Inclusion Mobile Government, Big Data,
Information Security and Cloud Computing.
Also known as Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA), Visa Online
introduced in its trial version on October 1 , 2011 became regular
procedure with the dawn of 2012.
The Immigration and Emigration Department had introduced the trial
version of the Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) facility. The ETA
facility became fully operational from January 1, 2012 with its launch
by the department on that date.
Foreign nationals, who intend to visit Sri Lanka for a short stay up
to six months, must obtain ETA, prior to their arrival from 1st of
January 2012. The ETA is issued through the on-line system. No passport
copies, documents or photographs are required. There is no requirement
to endorse the ETA in the passport. Nationals of Maldives and Singapore
who visit Sri Lanka for short visits up to 30 days are exempted from ETA
as reciprocities.
Representatives of award-winning organisations were present at the
award ceremony to receive the awards. ICTA was represented by CEO Reshan
Dewapura, Re-engineering Government Programme Director Wasantha
Deshapriya and Senior Re-engineering Government Programme Head
(Administration and Operations) D. C. Dissanayake. The Department of
Immigration and Emigration was represented by Immigration and Emigration
Controller W. A. Chulananda Perera.
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