The government must transition towards a transparent government centred on information communication technology (ICT), the Public Enterprise Development Deputy Minister said.

“It is possible to fight corruption with the Right to Information (RTI) Act and digitalization. There is no reason why the government can’t share information. It saves time for the people,” Eran Wickramaratne, who was the founder Chairman of the ICT Agency, said at the eighth National Conference on Cyber Security.

He noted that allowing freely available public information will save time for the public sector, as it won’t have to provide information on a repetitive piecemeal basis.

The interim government appointed in January had promised that the RTI Act will be introduced by February 20 under the 100-day programme. However, talk of the RTI Act had died down after a robust initial national dialogue in January and February. The previous regime had implemented a government portal, but most departments had not shared their information due to having isolated or non-existent ICT policies.

“Progress of ICT in the public sector has been slow, but we can’t ignore the successes either. Most government departments have websites and government servants have an official e-mail which is published.  We saw what happens when a personal email is used for official purposes with Hilary Clinton,” Wickramaratne added.

He noted that the lack of publicly available online documentation during the past regime led to rampant corruption. “There’s a lack of documents of what happened during the past regime behind closed doors, and physical files can also go missing,” he said. However, he explained that there must be an institutional network which will help protect-sensitive information, instead of having critical organisations in an unstructured manner, which will make them more vulnerable to cyber-attacks.

“The challenges of ICT were not understood in the past, so the public sector is significantly behind. So, Sri Lanka is vulnerable to cyber-attacks, corruption, and it will impact the country’s economic development,” he added.He said that the government will look towards the private sector for guidance in the ICT sector development in state enterprises. “We must align everything we do to international standards with local needs. We invite you to help Sri Lanka go towards future development,” he said.

Meanwhile, Wickramaratne added that social media will be the enforcer of democracy going forward, as when he had posted a statement on the HNDA situation, he too had been criticized. “We have come to a period in which social media holds the government accountable,” he said.

Social media played a key role in dismantling the previous regime.