8.5. The Programmatic Approach

Some governments may take a very proactive approach to scaling up shared-access points and engaging significant public resources. This may involve establishing a national agency responsible for overall coordination of scale-up activities as well as a detailed strategy and national implementation plan. Such national strategies may involve significant private sector and civil society involvement, but all activities take place within this national framework.

Ideally, such a coordinated approach would involve specific steps for developing partnerships across the public and private sectors and civil society to address some of the challenges of scaling up, such as:

• Technology partnerships
• Content and applications partnerships
• Capacity-building and support partnerships

Strong government leadership always needs to be balanced with continued stakeholder involvement in design and planning.

Sri Lanka(2)

In its 2002 paper, e-Sri Lanka: An ICT Development Road Map, the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) identified ICT as a means to achieve the country’s broader development goals—through technological and institutional transformation of key sectors in the economy. Through e-Sri Lanka, the government is leveraging ICT to improve public service delivery, increase private sector competitiveness, promote new sources of growth, accelerate social development, bridge the digital divide, and support peace.

The key elements and objectives of the ICT program articulated by the government are to:

• develop the necessary capacity to lead and implement an ambitious
  ICT program;

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