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State websites serve up stale, outdated, and confusing info
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By Mimi Alphonsus
The Department of Government Printing website, which publishes gazettes, bills, acts, and notices, has been down since 31 December 31 last year when it was hacked. Now under construction, the website lets visitors see certain government documents but doesn’t have a search function, making it difficult for citizens to engage with government activities.
Government Printer, Pradeep Pushpakumara said that a new website and firewall system is being procured to prevent future attacks. “I can’t give you an exact date but it will take at least one more month,” he said.
Accessing basic government information online is often difficult and sometimes impossible. The long construction period of the government printing department website is one such example. There are several other government websites that are redundant or duplicated, causing further confusion.
The site, gov.lk has a page dedicated to ministry websites but directs viewers to old websites, such as the Ministry of Indigenous Medicine which no longer exists.
The Ministry of Buddhasasana, Religious, and Cultural Affairs has two functional, updated websites. Several minor department websites that are still live have not had new information uploaded or been updated in years. https://luppd.gov.lk appears to be a scam site while secgov.wp.gov.lk occasionally redirects to e-commerce fashion sites. This is despite gov.lk being the exclusive domain of the government of Sri Lanka.
Government officials who requested anonymity shared that a big challenge has been the lack of technical skills in departments to understand and assess a proposal when tendering for a website development. He shared that some departments pay exorbitant amounts for low quality web development from small companies that later cease to exist. Those websites often lose past data when the servers expire.
“There are discussions to expand the Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) so we can do our own software development and host all the sites in one place, directly under the Ministry of Digital Economy.”
Besides confusion online, some crucial information only reaches the public domain — or indeed the government — years later.
Annual performance reports of government entities must be submitted to parliament and are uploaded on its website. However, many are submitted years late. Fourteen government entities, including crucial ones such as the Central Environmental Authority and Employees’ Provident Fund, presented their 2022 annual reports to parliament only in 2025.
This year the National Paper Company Ltd., finally presented to parliament its annual report from 2015/2016, as did the Central Cultural Fund for 2016 — both nearly a decade after the end of the reporting year. Some of these entities are public enterprises which are expected to submit annual reports to parliament within five months of the end of the fiscal year, as per treasury guidelines.
Deputy Minister of Health and Mass Media, Hansaka Wijemuni, said that regulations on how government websites should be structured or how information should be made available to the public, have not been imposed yet, but that the government plans to address the issue soon.
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