Published on: November 1, 2023

Citra Fellowship – Executive Programme for Senior Public Officials launched

Citra is Sri Lanka’s first Social Innovation Lab operationalized as a joint initiative between the Presidential Secretariat, Prime Minister’s Office and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), in Sri Lanka. It uses human-centred design and foresight and innovation tools to prototype and test development solutions to ensure they are agile and holistic before nation-wide implementation.

Recognizing the vital role of a strong public sector in the achievement of a country’s development goals, Citra, Sri Lanka’s first Social Innovation Lab, designed and facilitated the Citra Fellowship on Public Service Excellence. This experiential learning programme is tailor-made to suit the requirements of the public sector to further strengthen and transform them to become innovative and agile champions in the sustainable development process of a country.

Citra Fellowship – Executive Programme for 30 Senior Public Officials formally commenced last Monday (30) with the participation of Mr. Anura Dissanayake, Secretary to the PM, Ms. Chandima Wickramasinghe, Additional Secretary to the President, Mr. Iain Rennie, Former New Zealand Civil Service Commissioner and Ms. Azusa Kubota, UNDP Resident Representative.

The Executive Programme is designed by Citra Innovation Lab to equip public officials with capabilities on AAAG, Anticipatory, Agile and Adaptive Governance, strengthening their capacities to navigate through challenging environments.

The programme is delivered together with the Presidential Secretariat and the Prime Minister’s Office to build the next generation of public officials to drive the 2048 national vision.

Building on the success of the Fellowship in previous years, Citra is pleased to introduce a new iteration of the Fellowship programme that is tailored specifically for higher level officials, namely, Additional Secretaries, and Senior Assistant Secretaries working across different Ministry portfolios in Sri Lanka, in recognition of their vital position as being the next layer of leaders within the public sector of the country.

It is the aim of this programme to ensure that this next carder of leaders is equipped with the necessary skills and mind-sets required to tackle Sri Lanka’s ambitious development targets.

Selected participants will join a network of over 95 Fellows in Sri Lanka, and seven other countries around the world, and more than 900+ public officials who champion the embedding of innovation, strategic foresight, and digital skills and tools within their respective departments and organisations.

In addition to the Citra Lab resource personnel, the programme is bringing together experts from Australia, US, India and Moldova.

Mission

The Presidential Media Division is fully responsible for socializing the views, actions, decisions and statements of His Excellency the President through the media. Electronic, print and new media will contribute to this through a credible and engaging approach.

The media department works as a source of information on the subject of the President’s vision and mission by maintaining good coordination with public and private media organizations and journalists.

National policies, plans and measures are explained to the people through the use of high quality media. Identify the fallacies and reveal the truth.