The story of Harsha Wijayawardhana’s collaboration with Ravinatha Aryasinha—from the Ministry’s first dedicated website and network to digital repositories, publications and two decades of public diplomacy systems.
Ravinatha Aryasinha was an old Anandian and four years senior to Harsha. As a senior prefect and outstanding student in both Sinhala and English, Aryasinha helped train the younger Harsha in debating. Their association later became a professional collaboration lasting more than twenty years.
When Harsha joined the Institute of Computer Technology, Aryasinha was Acting Director of the Publicity Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He asked Harsha to establish a proper Ministry website. At the time, the Ministry had only a page within the Lanka Internet portal.
formin.gov.lk → slmfa.gov.lk → mfa.gov.lkHarsha records formin.gov.lk as the first dedicated web address. Contemporary international directories and government-contact records preserve email addresses using that domain. Wayback captures then preserve the Ministry at slmfa.gov.lk in 2003 and 2007. The Ministry’s current official address is mfa.gov.lk.
Open the 10 August 2003 Wayback capture →
Open preserved 2007 Ministry content →
Current Ministry website →
No accessible Wayback snapshot of the earliest Lanka Internet portal page or a complete early formin.gov.lk homepage has yet been located. The surviving domain references should therefore be read as evidence of official use, not as a recovered visual copy of the first design.
Harsha’s role extended from publishing into infrastructure. He designed the Ministry’s LAN/WAN and implemented its fibre-network environment, creating the communications foundation needed by a modern foreign service.
Harsha automated a document-management system around an intelligence-filing methodology introduced by the late Mr. Mahat of the National Intelligence Bureau. The aim was to turn institutional records into structured, searchable working knowledge.
Ravinatha Aryasinha spearheaded the development of an internal repository whose content became the basis for the Child Soldier book. Harsha collaborated in producing and compiling the publication, linking the Ministry’s accumulated evidence with a structured publishing workflow.
This contribution is presently documented from Harsha’s firsthand professional account. A dependable public catalogue record or complete online copy of the publication has not yet been recovered, so the website does not overstate independent verification.
Harsha later helped Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar establish a digital presence for the policy institution that came to bear his name. He advised on building a digital database using the still-nascent Internet as an institutional resource.
The collaboration with Aryasinha continued across later Foreign Ministry and diplomatic web initiatives, including mission publishing, content migration and efforts to make Sri Lanka’s official international information more coherent and accessible.
The archived slmfa.gov.lk pages and surviving formin.gov.lk contact records establish the domain sequence. Harsha’s published professional record documents his Foreign Ministry network work. The narrative about the original invitation, the repository, the publication workflow, Mr. Mahat’s filing method and the Kadirgamar Institute is Harsha’s firsthand account and is identified accordingly.