Professor Sam Karunaratne recollects a period more than half a century ago – i.e., the 1960s - when computerization commenced in Sri Lanka, then known as Ceylon. He recalls that the Government in the late 1960s decided to allocate a computer to a State sector organization. Dr. A.N.S. Kulasinghe, a civil engineer and the Founder Chairman of the State Engineering Corporation (SEC) indicated that he was in dire need of a computer. Consequently, SEC was allocated slightly over LKR 2 million to purchase a computer. Prof. Sam Karunaratne who was then at the U...
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Author: Chamali Perera
Mr Kolitha Dharmawardena (Admissibility of information produced by computers and related devices)
Mr. Dharmawardena became a member of the CINTEC Committee on Law and Computers in 1986. He represented the Attorney General’s Department. CINTEC, the predecessor to the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka, set up the Committee on Law and Computers to address the “formulation and incorporation into the country’s legal system suitable measures relating to computers and IT ….”. The Committee, at the outset realized that there was a need to examine the law of evidence to ascertain whether it could deal with new conditions that could emerge through the use of IT. This key assignment on the preparation of p...
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Mr. Manju Haththotuwa
Mr. Manju Haththotuwa was educated at Royal College, Colombo, Sri Lanka. He has a BSc (Hons) from the Imperial College, London and also an MBA from the University of London. He was COO / Executive Director at Millennium IT (MIT), an industry leader in Stock Exchange software. Mr. Haththotuwa states that his involvement in ICT at MIT indicated his enthusiasm to develop the ICT sector.
Manju was the founder Managing Director / CEO of the Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) of Sri Lanka. ICTA commenced operations on 1st July 2003, at Kirimandala Mawatha, Colombo 05. A key ...
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Mr. Pushpananda Ekanayaka
Mr. Pushpananda Ekanayaka has been designing letters of the Sinhala script, in different shapes from the time he was a young child. The first Sinhala font Mr. Ekanayaka designed was Malithi. In 1998, Mr. Ekanayaka released 10 fonts which he had developed, but these did not include a text typeface font. There was a necessity for a text font and consequently Mr. Ekanayake designed the hugely popular Sinhala ASCII font FM Abhaya. Thereafter, it was necessary to design and develop Sinhala fonts of various styles intended for different purposes. Consequently, he designed and developed 12 Sinha...
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Dr. Ranee Jayamaha
Dr. Ranee Jayamaha was awarded her first degree, BA (Hons) in Money and Banking from the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya in 1970. She was a lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of Peradeniya for a year and then joined the Economic Research Department (ERD) of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) in 1971, as an Economist. Thereafter, she received a British Council scholarship and proceeded to the University of Sterling, Scotland, UK to read for a two-year (1975-1976) Master’s Degree.
She was awarded the MSc in Economics in 1976 and upon her retu...
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Dr. Kavan Ratnatunga
Dr. Kavan Ratnatunga (Dr. Kavan) was educated at Royal College, Colombo and at the University of Colombo from where he received a BSc (First class, honors degree) in Physics, in 1976. He commenced his career in Astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh, USA, where he completed a M.Sc. degree in Astronomy. He read for a PhD at the Australian National University. Thereafter, Dr. Kavan went back to USA. At the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, in 1984, he first had an email address. From Princeton Dr. Kavan went to the Dominion Astrophysical Obse...
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Mr. Siri Samarakkody
Mr. Siri Samarakkody was educated at Royal College Colombo. He was the Secretary of the Radio Club. This is where he first evinced interest in electronics. He has been awarded an Honors Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, from the UK. He was a pioneer in bringing mobile telephony to Sri Lanka – he was the founder CEO of Celltel Lanka where he was involved in initial license negotiation and technical aspects. He was also involved in setting up Lanka Internet, which started the first commercial website in Sri Lanka, www.lanka.net.
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Prof. Rohan Samarajiva
Prof. Rohan Samarajiva was Director General of Telecommunications in Sri Lanka in 1998-99. During his tenure, a regulatory environment was created and the foundation for a competitive telecom sector were laid. He has contributed significantly toward telecommunications reforms which have impacted the development of the Internet in Sri Lanka. During the period 2002 – 2004, Prof. Samarajiva was the Team Leader at the Sri Lanka Ministry for Economic Reform, Science and Technology and participated in designing the e-Sri Lanka Development Program which was implemented by the ICT Agency (ICTA) of...
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Mr. Janaka de Silva
Mr. Janaka de Silva graduated from the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya in 1966 offering Physics and Mathematics. He holds an MBA. degree from the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka (CA Sri Lanka), the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and the Institute of Bankers of Sri Lanka. Mr. Janaka de Silva’s association with computing commenced in 1978 when he was assigned the task of computerizing the operations of the Bank of Ceylon. Later Mr. Janaka de Silva joined Sampath Bank as the founder General M...
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Mr. Balachandran Gnanasekaraiyer
Mr. Balachandran Gnanasekaraiyer has been responsible for key developments in the arena of ICT in Local Languages. As a Consultant to the Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) of Sri Lanka, in 2006 he commenced working on a Tamil keyboard layout to be standardized. He later worked on developing the draft Tamil ICT standard which encompassed the keyboard layout for Tamil with keying-in sequences, encoding for Tamil characters aligned to the Unicode standard and a Collation Sequence for Tamil. These were included in the draft standard which ICTA proposed to the Sri Lanka Stand...
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