Potential Challenges and Benefits of Information Technology and Economic Development in Sri Lanka

Abstract

This chapter discusses the potential challenges and Benefits of Information Technology and Economic Development in Sri Lanka by reviewing the awareness and readiness of the selected opportunities. This chapter also identifies the enabling factors, the bottlenecks and, forecasts the future growth of ICT Developments in Sri Lanka as a host in Asia. Further, Developing ICT and professional services offshoring opportunities should be a high priority for development strategy to the country. This chapter presents the findings from the survey which assessed the potential for an ICT in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is an island state of contrasts in terms of its Economic development and ICT capability. A research on the web survey of government institutes revealed that 30% of ministries in the country do not have web sites or may not be access able since they are inactive. 38% of the ministries are still in the infant stage and information available in web pages is often state in content and the number of pages is limited to few web pages. Only about 17 % of ministries offer interactive web content, where users have access to regularly updated information and can communicate through e-mail and download government documents through the internet. 15 % of the ministries provide some online services to the citizens .The Public or Private sector economic entities were not develop web sites in local language, all web site is in English even though 80% of population depend on their own local language. Majority of them in Sri Lanka is not speaking English.