ICTA, Ministry sign MoU for better governance via “eLocal”
ICTA, Ministry sign MoU for better governance via “eLocal”
Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) and the Ministry of Local Government Secretary signed a MoU to implement a project aimed at making the service by the local government authorities more people-friendly.
The project called the ‘eLocal Government Project’ asks the question “Do people face problems in obtaining the services the local government authorities are expected to deliver to the people? Are the current 330 Local Authorities in Sri Lanka delivering efficiently the service they are entrusted with?” The project looks at the services of the 18 Municipal Councils, 42 Urban Councils and 270 and Pradeshya Sabhas in the island. The services they are expected to perform consist of four types of primary healthcare, public thoroughfare and community development and public utility services. The project goes on to consider the services expected to be rendered under the above main heads. Under primary healthcare local authorities act as the public health authority, manage solid waste, maintain the drainage system, rationalize latrines and accommodations, provide conservancy and scavenging services, prevent unsanitary buildings and prevent nuisances etc. The public thoroughfare service is divided into maintenance and repair, service in connection with buildings along thoroughfare, action against damages to thoroughfare and utilisation of thoroughfare for special purposes. Community development has the following heads: pre-schools, libraries, and livelihood development. Public utilities are divided into: water supply, markets and fairs and playgrounds and children parks.
The Local Government Authorities also handle the preservation and development of environment and revenue management. Rates and taxes and assessment of properties come under revenue management. It has been found that over the years there have been serious problems in connection with the local authorities. This poor service delivery and socio-economic contribution is considered to be due to ineffective and inefficient governance. The problems is further spelled out thus and the: following problems have been found to exist in the local authorities: lack of facilitation towards a meaningful democratic representation, lack of effective data management system, lack of public confidence in Local Government, lack of civil society participation, obsolete systems and inefficient Resource and revenue management and the lack of accountability and responsiveness in service delivery.
The ‘eLG project’ has been proposed to address these problems. It envisages developing and implementing an ICT based solutions which can be freely deployed at all LAA to meet their generic requirements such as: Increasing the efficiency and effectiveness in governance, assuring citizen-friendly delivery of services by improving social accountability and transparency, enhancement of social inclusiveness and access to opportunities, strengthening of the revenue base of the LAA, encouragement of participatory good governance and improved management in socio-economic development orientations
This project will identify and prioritise five most critical functional areas of the LAA and provide a solution for those problems. This will include carrying out a system study, prioritisation of the five functional areas, development of software and implementation of the solution at four locations. (If time permits, ICTA will consider implementing the phase two of the project to cover the remaining functional areas of the LAA). However ICTA will assist the Ministry for replication of the solution at other places by playing an advisory role.
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