Disaster Management Ministry and ICTA jointly launch ‘sahana’ project

A project for the deployment of 'Sahana' Disaster Management System for National Disaster Relief Services Center (NDRSC) under the Disaster Management Ministry  (DMM) took place at DMM yesterday (20).

Initiated by the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) the project will ensure that  ICT is deployed to improve the efficiency of NDRSC.  The Sahana Free and Open Source Disaster Management System is a much needed solution that could cater to the additional operational needs of NDRSC.  It could fulfill the needs such as fund allocation, support in decision making and reporting facility.

Participating in the occasion, as Chief Guest, Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Amaraweera said that optimum use must be made of ICT in making the lives of people more comfortable. The Minister said that an overview of past disasters would show that most of them occurred during holidays. This was true even of the 2004 December 26 tsunami.

‘We as servers of people should work without restricting ourselves to eight to four or nine to five weekday work schedule. Neither should we be slavishly following circulars to refuse whatever assistance we could be instrumental in providing. Discussion, clarification and solution after studying the problem is always possible', the Minister added.

Participating in the launch as Guest of Honour Telecommunication and IT Minister Ranjith Siyambalapitiya said that with the creation of the new Telecommunication and IT Ministry  President Mahinda Rajapaksa had    given a series of mandate. One of them was to make  Sri Lanka reach 75 per cent ICT literacy by 2016. Another was that every aspect in a person’s life is made more comfortable through ICT by 2016 as much as possible. The Sahana Disaster Management System project was well in line with the endeavour to meet these challenges, Minister Siyambalapitiya said.