Telecommunication and Digital Infrastructure Minister Harin Fernando this week received Cabinet approval to implement 27 projects by ICTA within 2016-2019, under the 2017 budgetary allocations.
According the Cabinet Paper on the projects, the “strategy will focus on rapidly developing urgently needed digital infrastructure and connectivity across the country. It will also significantly improve the quality of government service delivery process and attention will be paid towards sufficiently empowering the citizens for enabling them to effectively use ICT to improve their livelihood and living conditions”.
The Ministry has initially submitted 28 projects to the Department of National Planning (DNP) and the projects were estimated to cost Rs 9,874.04 million.
In 2017, the government approved Rs 3,697.21 million for the projects. At the end of April 2017, overall physical progress of 27 projects stood at 15 percent. The project budget ICT solution for the Government Analysts’ Department; one of the 27 projects had to be increased to 40 million due to a change in the scope of the project.
Comprehensive action plans have been prepared and financial and physical progress reports are being submitted to the Ministry as well as Department of National Budgets. The projects will be monitored by the Department of Project management and Monitoring as well as the IT Management Section of the Ministry of Finance. ICTA has also developed a comprehensive result based monitoring and evaluating system.