ICTA's 'mobile portal' wins at Manthan Awards

The 'mobile portal' the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA)won an award under the e-Governance category at the Manthan Award 2012 recently.

While the other three winners under this category pertain to a state in India, the ICTA mobile portal pertains to a whole country, Sri Lanka. The other winners under e-Governance were the Department of Animal Husbandry and Fisheries in the Indian state of Jharkhand, Mid-day Meal Authority of Uttar Pradesh, and the Indian project of Patwari Online Assessment.

ICTA mobile portal (www.mobile.icta.lk) has been designed as a one-stop shop for citizens to access Government services on the mobile phone.

Citizens can easily download Government mobile services applications on their phones or send GovSMS (Government SMS) through the ICTA Mobile Portal and directly engage those services. Hence, ICTA Mobile Portal application increased the use of government mobile services among smart phone and tablet users. It is an HTML5 based app which can be accessed from any internet-enabled smart phone or a tablet PC.

Citizens can find information about government organisations from the ICTA Mobile Portal. They could find contact information such as address, telephone number, fax number and even the name of the head of the relevant department and his or her image on the portal. All government organisation data available at the GIC (Government Information Centre) sync with the mobile portal using a web service.

There is an administration panel to add mobile application information to Government departments in the mobile portal for each platform. Developers could host their mobile applications in their application specific app store and link those applications to the ICTA mobile portal.

Along with ICTA Mobile Portal another Sri Lankan project shone at Manthan Award 2012. It was bagged by Jayasiri Radio when it won an award under 'Community Radio' category.

Another Sri Lankan project which was recognised at Manthan Awards 2012 was the Web Patashala project organised by the Ministry of Education, State Trading Corporation and Etisalat (Pvt) Ltd.