October 14, Colombo (LNW): A high-level meeting has been convened today (14), to accelerate the restoration of essential online government services following a significant disruption to the Lanka Government Cloud (LGC), which has affected digital operations across several key state departments.
According to senior officials from the Ministry of Digital Economy, the urgent discussions are aimed at coordinating technical efforts, assessing the scale of the outage, and ensuring that public services return to normalcy without further delay.
The Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA), which oversees the national digital infrastructure, confirmed that the outage has temporarily disabled online platforms used by at least eight government entities. Among the affected services are the issuance of birth, marriage, and death certificates by the Registrar General’s Department; the e-Revenue Licence system used by Provincial Departments of Motor Traffic (excluding the Western Province); and the online police clearance system.
Other systems impacted include the platform for generating Certificates of Origin by the Department of Commerce and the websites of several public institutions, such as the Department of Meteorology, the Registrar of Companies, and the Sri Lanka Accounting and Auditing Standards Board.
Engineers from ICTA, in collaboration with the cloud service provider, are reportedly working around the clock to resolve the technical issues. While an exact cause has not yet been publicly detailed, initial assessments suggest the disruption may stem from internal system failures within the LGC infrastructure. No evidence has been released to indicate a cyberattack at this stage.
In response to the service interruption, the Registrar General’s Department has advised citizens to obtain physical copies of certificates from the relevant Divisional Secretariats as a temporary workaround.
Government departments relying on the cloud platform have been kept informed of developments, and contingency plans are being enacted to minimise the disruption to administrative processes.
The ICTA further stated that the ongoing LGC expansion project, which commenced earlier this month, is expected to significantly enhance system resilience and capacity once completed. Officials expressed confidence that the current limitations exposed by the outage will be addressed through the phased rollout of the new infrastructure.
While regretting the inconvenience caused to citizens and government bodies, ICTA reiterated its commitment to restoring full functionality as swiftly as possible. It urged the public to remain patient as technical teams continue their efforts to resolve the situation.
