Harsha Wijayawardhana’s contribution to building Sri Lanka’s early official presence on the World Wide Web—from the national portal and Presidential Secretariat to foreign-affairs websites and the Government Information Department’s news portal.
Harsha served as the first webmaster of www.lk, Sri Lanka’s original government web portal. The work required establishing publishing practices, maintaining national information online and helping government institutions understand a new public medium.
He developed the website of the Policy Research and Information Unit of the Presidential Secretariat, creating an official online channel for presidential information, policy material and national communications.
His government-web work extended to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, supporting the evolution of its official online presence from formin.gov.lk to mfa.gov.lk.
Between 2005 and 2010, Harsha designed and implemented the news.lk network and contributed to the portal’s development as a multilingual official government news service.
The launch was originally expected to be conducted by President Mahinda Rajapaksa. On the previous night—20 February 2009—two LTTE light aircraft carried out a suicide air raid over Colombo. One crashed into the Inland Revenue Department building and the other was shot down near the international airport. Because the President had to attend an emergency Defence Council meeting, Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake represented him at the news.lk event.
Despite the national-security emergency, the launch proceeded. Harsha demonstrated the portal and explained its operation to the Prime Minister, accompanied by ministers and senior officials. The occasion represented more than the opening of a website: it continued over a decade of work to build reliable official channels for Sri Lankan government information on the Internet.
Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake was Harsha’s father’s first cousin. The Prime Minister had not seen Harsha as an adult because Harsha had spent many years in Hong Kong and the United States. Harsha had nevertheless served as a consultant to the Prime Minister for almost three years. According to Harsha’s recollection, the family relationship was not known to the Prime Minister until Prof. V. K. Samaranayake explained it during the event.
The photograph consequently carried exceptional personal meaning. Harsha’s father kept it in his private study until his death, preserving a family memory within the history of Sri Lanka’s government Internet development.
Dating note: The LTTE air raid is independently documented as occurring on the night of 20 February 2009. The launch is therefore described as taking place immediately afterward. An independently archived invitation or official launch notice confirming the exact ceremony date has not yet been located.