Office of the Chief Secretary · Eastern Province
How to Fill the IT Inventory & Digitalization Plan Collection
A complete, step-by-step guide — with real screenshots and worked examples for every question — for anyone filling in the province-wide IT survey. No technical background needed. If you can fill in a form like this one, you already have everything you need.
- Before you start
- What kind of office is this? (new — added 2026-09-10)
- Section A — Your office
- The two gate questions (IT system? Own server?)
- If you are a Local Authority
- If you are a Hospital
- Section B — Describing each system (now includes per-system dev/maintenance difficulties)
- Section C — Development & maintenance experience
- Section D — Your digitalization plan
- Section E — Process & readiness
- Section F — Anything else, and submitting
- Getting help
1. Before you start — the short version
This form does two things: it builds an accurate inventory of the IT systems your office uses today, and it captures your office's own digitalization plan — what you'd want built or fixed next, in your own words. It is not an audit and will not be used to criticise past decisions — it's how the province gets an honest, accurate picture so future digitalization work is planned properly. There is a live “Need help?” button at the bottom-right of every page of the form if you get stuck — see the last section of this guide.
Throughout this guide and the form itself, questions often show two or three worked examples rather than just one — that's deliberate, so you don't feel pushed to copy the one example given. Use them as a range of what a good answer looks like, then write your own.
2. What kind of office is this? (new)
The very first question on the form now asks what kind of office you are: a provincial government office, a Local Authority (Municipal/Urban Council, Pradeshiya Sabha), or a Hospital / health institution. This changes a couple of questions further down the form — Local Authorities and Hospitals each get a short block of extra questions relevant to their kind of institution (see sections 5 and 6 below). Everything else on the form is the same for everyone.
The new first question — pick whichever describes your office. This decides which extra questions you'll see later.
3. Section A — Your office
Tell us your office's basic details first — office name, your name and contact, and an IT contact if that's someone else.
The very top of the form — title, explanation, and the "Need help?" / "full filling manual" links mentioned throughout.
Section A, filled in. Green boxes under a question always show worked examples for that exact question.
4. The two gate questions
These two questions are the most important on the whole form — they decide what you see next.
Does your office have any IT system currently?
A "system" here means any digital tool your office actually uses to do its work. That includes a proper database or app, but it also includes something as simple as a shared Excel sheet your office uses as a working register. If your office runs entirely on paper, answer No — that's a completely valid, common answer.
Answer Yes or No here. Answering No is not a wrong answer.
If you answer No, the form tells you so and skips the systems section (and the systems-only parts of Section C) automatically.
Does your office have its own server?
A physical or virtual machine your office owns or directly controls — not a shared government network drive, and not someone else's cloud account you just have a login for. If Yes, you'll be asked briefly what it's used for and whether it runs any system or file storage.
5. If you are a Local Authority
This block only appears if you picked “Local Authority” in question 2 above. It covers revenue and citizen-service digitalization specific to Local Authorities — online payment/GovPay, property tax, complaint tracking, RTI handling, garbage collection tracking, and digital publishing of council notices.
The Local Authority block, right after the two gate questions.
If citizens can pay you online, check whether it actually goes through the national GovPay gateway (look for a “GovPay” logo or instruction on your payment page) or a different, locally-built payment flow. If it's not GovPay, briefly describe what it is.
6. If you are a Hospital
This block only appears if you picked “Hospital / health institution” in question 2 above. It covers patient records and clinical systems — whether you have an EMR/EMRS system, whether it connects to any Ministry of Health system, digital OPD/ pharmacy/lab systems, and whether any system holds health data more sensitive than a bare NIC number.
The Hospital block, right after the two gate questions.
The per-system “holds NIC” question you'll see in Section B is about a bare ID number. This question is different and asks about diagnosis, treatment history, and other health data — a materially more sensitive category on its own, so it's asked separately.
7. Section B — Describing each system (only if you answered Yes above)
For every system your office uses, click “+ Add another system” and fill in one block per system — there's no limit. Below is a fully filled example showing the kind of answer expected for every single question in this section.
One system entry, start to finish — every field has its own examples directly underneath.
Field-by-field notes
Pick whichever category is the closest fit — Google Sheet, database, website, web app, desktop app, or file server. If nothing quite fits, choose "Other" and describe it in the next question.
These are two different questions. "Who built it" is the company/team that made the system. "Hosting vendor" is who keeps it running day to day (e.g. AWS, Azure, a local hosting company). If it just runs on a computer in your own office, leave hosting vendor blank.
Tick every data type that applies — most systems hold more than one (e.g. staff records AND financial records). Separately tick the NIC checkbox if National Identity Card numbers are stored anywhere in the system.
These two questions used to be asked once for the whole office. They're now asked per system, right at the end of each system's own block — so if you have more than one system, each one gets its own answer instead of a single combined one.
The end of a system's block — security review, then its own dev/maintenance difficulty questions, then the updated Section C note pointing back here.
8. Section C — Development & maintenance experience
If you answered Yes to having an IT system, you'll be asked about difficulties faced building it and difficulties maintaining it now. If you answered No, these two are skipped automatically — but everyone is asked about their biggest day-to-day frustration, whether that's a system problem or a manual/paper process problem.
Development and maintenance difficulties are now asked per system in Section B above (see the note and screenshot there) — this section now only asks the one question below, which everyone answers.
9. Section D — Your digitalization plan
This is where the form captures your office's own plan for the future — not ours. There are no wrong answers here, including “we don't have a plan yet.”
Section D's own intro makes this explicit — this section is your digitalization plan, in your own words.
10. Section E — Process & readiness
A few short questions about your office's broader digital readiness — internet reliability, IT staffing, and any manual processes that are strong candidates for going digital.
Pick whichever best describes a typical week — Daily outages, Occasional issues, or Generally reliable.
11. Section F — Anything else, and submitting
A final open field for anything not covered above, then submit.
12. Getting help
Every page of the form has a “Need help?” button fixed to the bottom-right corner. Tap or click it any time — on a phone, tap it; on a computer, you can also just hover your mouse over it. Works exactly the same on phone and computer.
The help panel — tap the round button to open it, tap the × to close it.