Lanka Gate
The Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) is the apex body responsible for ICT policy and direction for the nation and the implementation organization for the e-Sri Lanka initiative. In the e-Sri Lanka initiative leveraging on ICT to reform the way government thinks and works is given a very high importance. Following are some of the key strategies employed in achieving the above.
1. Interconnect government agencies to achieve a higher level of productivity through improved interactions
2. Make the public services truly citizen centric
3. Ensure geographically non-discriminated and equity oriented service delivery
As an important component of the e-Sri Lanka initiative, it is envisioned that practically all the eServices and electronic information in Sri Lanka will be delivered via a comprehensive integration platform. This wide collection software infrastructure and systems which is envisioned to be the gateway for electronic information and electronic interactions in Sri Lanka, is generally referred to as the ‘Lanka Gate’ initiative.
Many eServices will be generated as a result of various projects done at the ICT Agency, such as the Population Registry project, the ePensions project and the Samurdhi Services project. In addition, many other eServices could be generated by government, public and private sector organizations as well as by community groups. Lanka Gate would include a comprehensive collection of infrastructural mechanisms to easily ‘plug-in’ an eService or to ‘compose’ a set of eServices in order to generate an composite eService, such that these eServices would be readily and easily available to other applications and portals that comprise Lanka Gate. For this purpose, it is envisioned that the projects within Lanka Gate would be designed to leverage Web 2.0 concepts, open standards and a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), enabling dynamic, customizable, collaborative and compose-able services via multiple delivery channels.
Thus the collection of software systems that comprise Lanka Gate would collectively provide an enabling infrastructure for rapid integration and delivery of eServices, leveraging loosely-coupled architectural principles to encourage the creation of innovative applications, solutions, and business models, communication models, pricing models and service mash-ups by various stakeholders across the country.
The intention is that this architectural blueprint will guide the various software engineering projects that would eventually be integrated into Lanka Gate. Since Lanka Gate will always be in a state of flux with the continuous addition of eServices from new projects, removal of old eServices as well as the generation of new applications, portals or composite eServices via services mash-ups or services composition, it is hoped that this overall architectural blueprint would continue to ‘live’ as a vision of what the end result should embody. Furthermore, it is expected that the launch of the Lanka Gate initiative will be coupled with the roll-out of a strong SOA Governance Model.
The conceptual design shown above in Figure 1 illustrates the loosely-coupled and flexibility of the Lanka Gate infrastructure. It is composed of following core components.
Lanka Interoperability Exchange Project (LIX)
The Lanka Interoperability Exchange (LIX) delivers all the interconnectivity and discovery capabilities that services implemented by the various projects need, by facilitating message routing, transport management, transaction management, mediation, transformation, policy enforcement and service discovery.
Country Portal (CP)
The Country Portal (srilanka.lk) serves as a primary web interface that connects users to the eServices provided within the Lanka Gate concept. Thus the Country Portal is a fundamental access point for citizens, non-citizens, businesses, agents and government employees to various government organizations and businesses in Sri Lanka. The Country Portal features multiple service delivery channels to accommodate various end user realities.
Credit Card On-line payment Services
A system to enable credit card payments for government enabled eServices, thereby facilitating electronic commerce for credit card holders.
Mobile Payment Services
A system to enable payment via a mobile phone for government enabled eServices, thereby facilitating electronic commerce for mobile phone users (This is yet to be integrated).
SMS Gateway (GovSMS)
A common interface open for mobile service providers to establish in-bound and out-bound Short Messaging Services (SMS) with Lanka Gate architecture. The mobile information and service gateway built as a part of Lanka Gate by ICTA to use the common, short telephone code “1919” should be used by all government organizations for delivery of such information and services.
Service Registry
The service registry provides the infrastructure to define and manage meta data of the SOA in a well structured manner. Features such as, access control, version management, tagging, linking, searching, and notification, can be utilized in order to implement the “design-time SOA governance”.
