The government intends to issue an official email address to every public sector employee, Deputy Minister of Digital Economy Eranga Weeraratne said, describing it as a step towards networking the entire public service, Hiru News reported.
Most state employees currently use personally created email accounts for official work. Weeraratne said replacing those with government-issued addresses would make the exchange of official documents and other essential data considerably easier.
He said the system would let officials be connected for activities including video conferences, and would make data sharing between government institutions more efficient. The initiative is intended to support the government’s wider digitalisation programme and help it be carried out more effectively.
Context
The proposal follows a series of state digitalisation measures. Courts across the country have been issued institutional email accounts under the eCourt programme, which covers roughly 1,050 accounts across some 350 courts.
Replacing personal accounts with official ones also bears on record-keeping and security. Sri Lankan state bodies have previously been exposed to business email compromise, where correspondence conducted outside controlled systems is harder to verify and audit.
Not reported
The report gives no timeline, cost, or implementing agency for the programme, and does not say how many public sector employees would receive addresses or what domain would be used. It does not say whether the system would be built in-house or procured, nor whether existing institutional accounts would be migrated into it.
No other verified newsroom appears to have carried the Deputy Minister’s remarks, and no accompanying statement from the Ministry of Digital Economy could be found. This report rests on a single Hiru News filing and should be read as the statement of an intention rather than an announced programme.
Sources: Hiru News.
