The Consular Affairs Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was awarded the Public Sector Most Outstanding ICT Achievement Award and the Gold Award in the Government and Public Sector Category at the 19th National Best Quality ICT Awards held at the Hotel Taj Samudra recently.

The two awards were presented to the Consular Affairs Division in recognition and appreciation of its online Electronic Document Attestation System (e-DAS) developed to provide quality services to the Citizens of Sri Lanka and in recognition and appreciation of the efforts made to introduce, nurture and develop an ICT environment in the Consular Division to improve service delivery.

The e-DAS was rated as the most innovative digital platform in the public sector of Sri Lanka.

The Consular Affairs Division launched the online e-DAS on 6th February 2017 that is aimed to improve and streamline document attestation and processing time for the public, as well as have an online system to book appointments.

The NBQSA Ceremony is annually organized to recognize and appreciate best ICT innovations under 19 categories including the Public Sector Most Outstanding Achievement. The applications for the competition were judged by experts in the ICT industry and academia representing local and international institutions. This award ceremony was organized by the Sri Lankan Section of the British Computer Society, the Chartered Institute of IT in the UK, in collaboration with Information Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) Sri Lanka.

The ICTA was the technical service provider for managing the e-DAS project. The EPIC Lanka Pvt Ltd developed the software for the e-DAS.

Prasad Kariyawasam, Secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, S.S. Ganegama Arachchi, Senior Director General of the Consular Affairs Division and the staff of Consular Affairs Division were present at the event to receive the awards.