All you need to know, is four digits away

Need information? Sri Lanka’s first ever government call centre will help you out

By simply dialing 1919 from any phone anywhere in the country, one could now access a wide range of government related information. This remarkable service is provided to the public by the Government Information Centre (GIC), launched in August last year. To date, information concerning citizen services provided by 55 government departments is easily accessible to callers in Sinhala, Tamil or English.

“An average of 2,300 calls are answered per day in all three languages,” said Athula Pushpakumara, Project Manager of the GIC. He explained that GIC was created by the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA), in collaboration with the Presidential Secretariat. “Phase One was officially launched in August 2006, with 20 departments, after a beta-testing period in April,” Mr. Pushpakumara said. “These 20 departments provide 250 citizen services. A knowledge base was established and information from various departments absorbed.”

Phase Two brought in another 35 departments, making a total of 55. Having started small with five call agents, GIC now has about 15 call agents, all of whom speak at least two languages. The process of obtaining information regarding government services is thus made free of hassle. The call agents are trained to provide a friendly, courteous service. Callers can obtain information regarding day to day issues such as procedures of obtaining identity cards, driving licences etc.

The centre has recently started an issue tracking service, where all calls are given a registration number. If the information is not available on the GIC database, a call agent will make it available in 24 hours.

“This would be the first government call centre dedicated to providing government related information to the public in all three languages,” said Programme Director, ICTA, Wasantha Deshapriya. “We started with the concept that even government servants are often not aware of procedures for obtaining services. For example, if you take foreign employment, people need to know where to call, what supporting documents are required and so on. When you find the relevant number you are often pushed from pillar to post. We wanted to have a place where anyone can easily find out how to obtain any government service.”

Mr. Deshapriya explained that they first developed a question and answer template on common areas. It took them over a year to collect the relevant information from the twenty departments. This information was not freely available in some departments. Handbooks or manuals of service had to be developed, which were also useful to the departments concerned. Most departments gave in hard copy which had to be retyped. Incorporating this information into Unicode format was also a challenging task.

The processing of call-centre services was outsourced to Timex BPO after calling for tenders. The training of call agents was also handled by them. The call centre is open to callers 365 days of the year, 12 hours a day, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

“One remarkable aspect is the ability to provide information to Tamil speaking citizens,” Mr. Deshapriya said. “In my experience I find that often when a caller speaks in Tamil, the capacity is lacking to respond to it. This is therefore an opportunity to respond to Tamil speaking callers’ queries.”

Mr. Deshapriya said that in order to ensure updated information on services, a coordinating officer has been appointed in each government department.

The GIC is also now in the process of enabling people to download various required forms from the home or office and save on time spent travelling to various offices. “All information available at the call centre is also provided on the website, www.gic.gov.lk., in all three languages,” the Director added.

Another important factor is that 1919 can be dialed from any other telephone networks, such as Dialog, Mobitel, Suntel, Hutch etc., Mr. Pushpakumara said. “We are also trying to make it a toll-free call,” he added.

That the popularity of the service is increasing day by day is evident from the fact that even during weekends about 1000 calls are answered each day. “Our plan is to create a knowledge society by empowering the people,” he adds.