10 February 2022 12:45 am Views - 2308
The government regulations are the major bottleneck that holds back the public and state sectors from embracing digitalisation, according to Digital Technology and Enterprise Development State Minister Namal Rajapaksa.
“Unfortunately, though most of the government leaders speak about digitalisation, we don’t realise that our own regulations and Acts in Parliament don’t allow us to transform the manual system to digital system,” said Rajapaksa, who is also the Youth and Sports and Development Co-Ordination and Monitoring Minister.
He made the comments while addressing the launch of the Lanka National Remittance Mobile App, at the Central Bank, this week.
Rajapaksa shared that the government is gearing to introduce new regulations in Parliament to make sure that the officials are protected from implications that may stem from digital transformations.
He was referring to the digital signatures being allowed with the automation of the courts but cannot be fully implemented as the administrative rules do not accommodate e-signatures.
In an effort to set an example for other ministries and government institutions to follow, the Youth and Sports Ministry will implement a road map in the coming months to allow 75 percent of the administration work to be done from home. The plan would be implemented before the end of the first quarter, he said.
Further, Rajapaksa called on the Central Bank to be open to embrace blockchain, a digital ledger of transactions that is duplicated and distributed across the entire network of computer systems on the blockchain.