Category: Digital Transformation
Client: ICTA
Sri Lanka is ranked around the middle in most digital transformation indices. In a bid to make a sustainable leap towards the top of the indices and enable more opportunities at national level, certain provisions in the legal framework, digital infrastructure, security, and digital skills have now been identified.
According to the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA), there is agreement among all stakeholders in the country, on the importance of e-governance mechanisms and systems. The National Digital Policy for Sri Lanka 2020- 2025 has been adopted by the Ministry of Technology, outlining Sri Lanka’s digital agenda until 2025. During the next three years the Ministry of Technology will focus on four main areas such as digital government, digital economy, digital laws and policies, and digital services. All these areas are supported by digital technology.
In the backdrop of initiating a National Digital Government Strategy, ICTA reached out to Citra in 2019 to support this national endeavour. As part of Citra’s support towards developing Sri Lanka’s National Digital Government Strategy, it sought to collaborate with the e-Governance Academy (eGA) in Estonia to carry out a digital maturity assessment.
The eGA which is a Centre of Excellence to increase the prosperity and openness of societies through digital transformation, has partnered with over 290 organizations in 143 countries since 2002, to build successful digital societies that improve their citizens’ lives, strengthen their economies, and deliver transparent, democratic, and effective public administrations.
Despite the bottlenecks brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, Citra and the experts from e-GA continued the dialogue from December 2020 until August 2021 to understand the government’s readiness for a transformation change . The report which followed, incorporated the results of surveys and interviews conducted with multiple government stakeholders including ministries and universities.
The 12 focus areas included:
The report assessed the digital readiness of the Sri Lankan public sector in 12 digital governance domains and proposed recommendations based on world-wide best practices, which would help Sri Lanka to move towards more mature levels of digital governance. It provided an additional focus on the potential benefits for the private sector through the digitisation of services relevant for businesses.
The Sri Lankan Government has a taken strong initiative to reach a new level of digital transformation. It can be seen from the already adopted legal framework and initiatives in the areas of international cooperation, telecommunication, and information security
The digital readiness assessment made the following critical key recommendations:
The assessment report which made a comprehensive analysis including political will and support, digital skills, access to services and e-participation and e-democracy was a key driver in shaping the National Digital Government Strategy which was launched in Sri Lanka in 2021.
