Sri Lanka’s ePensions project takes off
Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka has rolled out the government’s ePensions project. To ensure timely disbursement of payments, a central database will now expedite the application processing, computation of pension grants and file tracking.
ePensions project, an ambitious project of Ministry of Public Administration and Home Affairs and Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) has just commenced its implementation phase by signing the contract with E-W Information Systems Ltd, 3i Infotech and hSenid Software International.
As per the plans the system is to be developed and rolled out in Colombo, Moratuwa and Hanwella Divisional Secretariats within a year. Once the pilot phase is completed, based on the success, ICTA would roll-out the project island wide in a phased out manner.
“This project is a tribute to the pensioner community, who had worked really hard towards the development of this country and now expecting the return from the country in their elderly age,” says ICTA COO/Director Reshan Dewapura.
The key responsibilities of the department are computation and payment of pension gratuities compensation and other retiring benefits to public officers, implement pension scheme for widows / widowers and orphans of state officers, compute and pay awards to non-pensionable monthly-paid public officers.
There are approximately 600,000 public sector pensioners and roughly Rs. 250 millions of funds are disbursed among them monthly as pensions payments. Although grants are worked out at the department of Pensions, the monthly payments are made at divisional secretariats which are scattered across the island.
“There were number of attempts made to establish several small IT systems at the Department of Pensions to monitor the progress of the activities. However due to the absence of an integrated system which can expedite the application processing, computation of pension grants and file tracking, the department is experiencing long delays in application processing and attending to the pensioners’ grievances,” e-Pension Project Manager Thusha Mukunthan pointed out.
The irregularities in various pension schemes have gone unattended as the complaints are numerous for the limited number of staff to attend. This has made it necessary for the pensioners to visit the Department of Pensions several times for attending to their pension issues.
However, ePensions project envisages developing and implementing a comprehensive ICT solution to bridge this gap. This project would utilise the inputs of other e-Gov projects such as Lanka Government Network (LGN) and public sector ICT capacity building.
The central database of the Department of Pensions would be kept updated with inputs from the Population Registry and Divisional Secretariats will be provided with up-to-date information from the central database. The data exchange between Department of Pensions and Divisional Secretariats would be accomplished by using data communication lines resulting in the up-to-date information at both ends.
