Jayantha de Silva appointed Secretary to Ministry of Technology

Jayantha de Silva has been appointed as the Secretary to the newly established Ministry of Technology.

The Ministry of Technology was established as a cabinet ministry through a gazette notification on November 23. The Ministry was assigned under the purview of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

The newly appointed Secretary to the ministry Jayantha de Silva is the current chairperson of the Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) of Sri Lanka.

The former CEO and President of IFS Sri Lanka was appointed to that position on December 19, 2019.

Jayantha De Silva has over 30 years of experience in the IT industry with extensive exposure in national policy-making and strategies for knowledge services, with hands-on experience in large projects globally.

He is a founder member and former Chairman of the Sri Lanka Association of Software and Service Companies (SLASSCOM) and former Chairman of the Software Exporters Association. 

He served as a Board Director of the Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) of Sri Lanka, Chairman of British Computer Society (BCS) Sri Lanka and a member of the Board of the University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC). 

He also was in the advising panel to the Government of Sri Lanka in the formulation of national-level policies related to the ICT industry of Sri Lanka.

De Silva is a Post Graduate Diploma holder from the International Statistical Programs Center, Washington DC; Fellow (FBCS) of the BCS, the Charted Institute for IT and a Chartered IT Professional (CITP) and recipient of the ICT Lifetime Achievers’ Award/Most Outstanding Contribution Award for services to the software industry in Sri Lanka, awarded at the National Best Quality Software Awards in 2011.

Having joined as Managing Director, Jayantha De Silva served as President and CEO IFS Sri Lanka Ltd, the local arm of global enterprise applications company IFS which is based in Sweden, until his appointment as ICTA chairman.