The Sri Lankan Government Development Policy identifies that "Action has to be taken early to overcome deficiencies regarding the lack of information systems related to statistical data, emergency services and physical features."

In order to leverage Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for the development of the government sector, the Government has developed the following vision.
"To adopt ICT in all its aspects to make government more efficient and effective, improve access to government services, and create a more citizen centric government"

LankaSIS is Sri Lanka's national Statistical Information Service created and maintained by the Department of Census and Statistics (DCS), the National Statistics Office.

DCS is the central government agency responsible for collection, compilation, analysis and dissemination of reliable and timely statistical data for the purpose of planning, formulation and implementation of national and sub national level development programs. DCS is organized with centrally located headquarter technical divisions, an island-wide network of field offices as well as branch offices in key Ministries, Departments and other Government Institutions.

Statistical data that is collected by DCS headquarters as well as its branch offices are usually maintained at different locations in different formats. Lack of a coherent system for efficient retrieval of data has therefore been a problem faced by data users which has made it essential for a one-stop shop for statistical data.

As the central agency having the co-ordinatory and technical supervisory authority of statistical data collection activities, a central system for maintaining and dissemination data has been a long felt need of DCS and has become a reality with the assistance of Statistics Korea.

LankaSIS is the centralized statistical information service created and maintained by DCS which offers a wide range of official statistics collected through censuses, surveys, special enumeration activities by DCS headquarters and its branch offices as well as statistical data extracted from various administrative records.

LankaSIS features easy and convenient search functions, a large range of easy-to-comprehend contents for general users and referential information to facilitate users with easy and fast access to information they need.

Note: LankaSIS data users are hereby advised strictly to abide by the nature and restrictions of the data, usually detailed (if any) as table specific comments in a pop-up window, which is displayed only on click the <Comment> button located at top-right-hand side of any LankaSIS user-displayed data table.