Lanka Government Network becomes worthless exercise
The Lanka Government Network (LGN) project aimed at unifying and upgrading government establishments by using a single network has failed to achieve the expected results, a special internal audit inspection has revealed.
The project has been launched to connect 3,500 government organisations and buildings with a minimum bandwidth of 100Mbps, and this will be further expanded up-to 7,500 locations by connecting country’s post office network.
All of these locations will be facilitated with Wi-Fi zones, which will create a conducive environment to the citizens to use government services conveniently.
The audit query further observed that the cost on the LGN has been exorbitant but the project has become unsuccessful.
The shortcomings in the project structure have led to the failure of the project but it was disclosed in the committee that the project had been restructured as LGN 3 and is being implemented now.
Recommendations have been made to present a report within a period of three months including detailed information about the present situation of each project, abandoned projects and the reasons that led to the abandonment.
This directive was issued to officers/ institutions responsible/to implement the recommendations of the Secretary – Ministry of Technology Chairman – Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka to report the current situation and the progress.
This has not been reported even until 31.01.2021. The audit report pointed out the necessity to formulate a legal framework for data protection and the committee emphasised that attention be paid towards the confidentiality of information when the said framework is implemented.
Recommendations have also been made to formulate the Data Protection Legal Framework in accordance with the Central Bank guidelines.
Further, it was disclosed that this project could not be implemented since the frequency range requested had not been allocated
by the Sri Lanka Telecommunication Regulatory Authority.
The cost on the LGN has been exorbitant but the project has become unsuccessful.