Digitizing Mining & Mineral Industry for Sustainable Future: Distinguishing Regulatory Expectations with Business Operations

Sri Lankan mining and mineral industry is the driving industry of local construction projects. The effective management of all engineering processes at the mining and mineral industry will ensure the industry’s sustainability. As per studies conducted based on the cement consumption of the country, the total local sand consumption and the sand supply through the Geological Survey and Mines Bureau has a gap of more than 50% from 2014 to 2018. The disparity between the supply and the consumption has only been matched by supply from illegal sand mining. To promote sustainability, we tried out an online digitized solution known as Mining & Mineral Production (mmPro) Monitoring Solution, which effectively controls and monitors the licenses by recording transactions done using issued licenses. Meanwhile, according to a case study done between 2017 - 2020, another solution called the Welithota application has been introduced with the aims of promoting efficient transaction management at mining sites. These two applications currently function independently without intercommunication. It is clear that these two solutions have eliminated the technophobia in the miners’ and government officers’ minds and the technological challenges in mining sites. Therefore, this study proposes a framework for the co-existence of the two applications, without interchanging the sensitive data, thereby ensuring better cooperation.