Colombo civil service turning to e-governance

The Colombo District Secretariat commenced another e-governance program by issuing Grama Niladhari (GN) certificates for the residents in the district.

This new service will enable people to quickly get GN certificates that are needed for various purposes to prove their place of residence.

The Colombo district is ahead of other districts in using ICT for governance and this program will cover the whole district by 2012, Colombo Government Agent G. A. J. Sylvester told the Sunday Observer.

“Two years ago we started computerising the details of the households. We collected all the information relevant to each household and computerised them. Today we have the largest database in the government administration. We will use this database to provide a better service for the people” he said.

“Issuing GN certificates is the first step and we will be able to use this database to modernise this kind of time consuming and costly services in the future, said the Secretary to the Ministry of Public Administration” D. Dissanayake. He was addressing a ceremony held at the ministry to launch the program last week.

This database can be accessed by the GN and the Divisional Secretary (DS) or his authorised officers. “Today in the Colombo district we issue 160,000 GN certificates per year.

Under the normal procedure it takes a minimum of two days to issue a certificate because the DS has to certify it and the GN needs time to verify the details of the person to whom he issues the certificate.

“However, under the new system the GN needs only the National Identity Card number of the person and the computer system gives him all the details of the person in the certificate format. It is electronically directed to the DS for his approval instantly. The Colombo district secretariat has earlier started the issue of birth, death and marriage certificates quickly using information technology. Sylvester said that over 560,000 original copies of the above certificates were scanned and entered into a database.

The new certificates are also regularly entered into the database. Today any person can get copies of the above certificates from DS office quickly by providing his NIC number, he said.

The Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) provided guidance for this e-governance initiative. The computer system was designed by the IT department of the University of Colombo. By 2012 the program will be extended to all 557 GN divisions of the district.

He said that the main constraint that delay the expansion is purchasing computers”. We allocate funds from the annual budget, and has given IT training for all the GN officers.

They have also been trained about the new system within our own IT centre, Sylvester said.

(GW)