Design of eSri Lanka

Posted on January 6, 2005 / 10 Comments

An article describing the thinking behind the design of e Sri Lanka, with emphasis on e government and infrastructure is at . As the title note states, this was a collective design that many contributed to. So, I cannot take credit for the design, though I will have to take responsibility for any errors in the article.

This is a good journal for those working on developing country infrastructure issues. Subscribe. Read.

10 Comments

Donald Gaminitillake
January 10, 2005, 6:08 am
You have missed the bjggest barrier to e-government in Sri Lanka
That is inability to use Sinhala and Tamil in the computer
Please visit my site http://www.akuru.org for the only solution (patent pending 13120+copyrights)
Unicode Sinhala set and SLS 1134 is incomplete

First develop the Sinhala and Tamil character allocation table and a free software to with it.

This is the prime task of the ICTAgency
Divakar Goswami
January 11, 2005, 12:44 pm
The computer gremlins are playing up! I have posted a reply to the above post twice and both times it disappeared somewhere in cyberspace. So third time wiser, I am typing this first in a Word document! Ha! The gremlin turns out to be a software feature to dissuade spammers from posting on this sitei.e. until the boss of the gremlin [Indi] made a special exception to this post, nobody was allowed to post more than 5 external linksand I have 11! Thanks Indi
———

1. You make a good point about making Sinhala and Tamil Unicode font available to the people. However, a quick google search yielded a number of sites that already offer Sinhala and Tamil Unicode compliant fonts and keyboards or overlays. And some of them are available as free downloads too. So I am a bit surprised by your emphatic tone in your statement that the biggest barrier to e-gov in Sri lanka is the supposed lack of Tamil and Sinhala fonts.

Websites that offer Sinhala and Tamil fonts or keyboard/overlay solutions:
http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/bylanguage/sinhala.html
http://www.xenotypetech.com/osxSinhala.html
http://www.datacal.com/dce/tamil-overlays.htm
http://www.djrazor.8m.com/help/
http://www.lankalinksystems.com/sri-lanka/sinhala/sinhala-fonts.htm
http://www.nongnu.org/sinhala/doc/howto/sinhala-howto.html
http://www.nongnu.org/sinhala/doc/howto/sinhala-howto.html
http://www.geocities.com/avarangal/tamilunicode.html
http://nila.brinkster.net/help/howto.htm
http://www.kamban.com.au/prodtamkbd.htm

2. The capital required to develop a national backbone that involves digging hundreds of kilometres to lay fiber optic cables, install switches and associated equipment is in a different league than the capital required to develop Sinhala Unicode fonts. I am sure you will agree with me that the barriers to entry in the former is couple of magnitudes higher than the latter. Hence, you see a proliferation of private initiatives to develop Sinhala and Tamil fonts but no entity private or government has stepped forward to set-up a truly national backbone infrastructure. Until of course the World Bank stepped forward with $53 million. And even now the government would have to provide inducements to private operators to go set-up networks in high cost areas. E-gov is only one among many other services and opportunities that will flow over that network once it is completed.

3. The primary task of govt agencies in my mind, is to facilitate a rapid deployment of the network. When the market is doing a good job of providing various Sinhala, Tamil font solutions, why should any government agencies be involved?

4. That article by Rohan does allude to the paucity of Sinhala and Tamil content and the need for encouraging local content development:

It is recognized that the tele-centres must offer useful and relevant
content in local languages. Given the paucity of such content
in Sinhala and Tamil, an objective behind the emphasis on
e-government services was the encouragement of the development
of relevant content in the official languages. P.179

LIRNEasia has in its midst the key people who developed the e Sri Lanka project. So I would request them to step in and correct anything I may have misstated or missed.
indi
January 11, 2005, 1:22 pm
the ‘gremlin’ so to speak is a Spam Filter – which weeds out at least 1 or 2 messages a day. I would tell you what those messages are about, but then the filter would kick this out. Suffice it to say that you can’t really talk about games of chance or drugs on blogs anymore.

If you look at any of those solution, Div, they’re not workable. Tamil is OK cause Tamil is Unicode, but making a Sinhala website is so hard as to be impossible – at least in my experience. What most of the Sinhala Papers use is the Kaputa.com font, which the user has to download. This is not a good solution. None of the solutions available are clean, they all require severe hacking on the part of the designer.

For my work with Sarvodaya we’re considering using Singlish, as in ‘Cohomathe, mage namayuh Indrajit’ to get around the problem altogether.
Donald Gaminitillake
January 11, 2005, 9:30 pm
Dear Divakar,

You have misunderstood the differance of the word “FONT” and a “character allocation table” for Sinhala and Tamil in Sri Lanka. Technically if you type in english you use the “LATIN” allocation table. Font makers will make differant fonts according to this allocation table. Font is an art work. I do not talk about fonts. I talk about the Sinhala and Tamil individual character allocation table.

If you take the Sinhala Unicode (SLS 1134) this is an incomplete list of sinhala characters.
There is no OCR , SMS, Voice to text , E-mails in Sinhala in Sri Lanka.
The data is not compatible.

There is no point to have VGA or telecenters without Sinhala and Tamil. Since ICTA do have 53 million why not spend 1/25 th of it to develop the character allocation tables. This is a part of the infrastructure.

According to our constitution in Sri Lanka we have to use Sinhala and Tamil in all goverment work.
If we are unable to use both Sinhala and Tamil in a computer how can you implement the proposals.

To Indi – trasliteration of Sinhala and Tamil is not a solution. Japan , Korea , China do have thousands of characters and all are listed as individual characters. We got to think byond a type writer.

I will be publishing the total number of Sinhala characters shortly. ISBN 955-98975-0-0
It is now in the press.
Donald Gaminitillake
January 11, 2005, 9:59 pm
Dear Divakar

The sites you have listed do give access to Sinhala and Tamil fonts and Keyboards

Keyboards are not an issue. There are several keyboard key in methods in this world.
Irrespective to the keyboard and FONT — the selected character has to be the same in all applications and in any OS.

This is not happening in my country Sri Lanka.
This is because the Chracter allocation table has not been introduced.

“Text” written by person “A” is not compatible when the person “B” open it unless the person “B” use the same FONT, Application and OS of the person “A”. This isolate users in the same ethinic group.

Unfortunately these problems cannot be seeing or understood by any one who uses a computer in any language that is based on “Latin” script ,Hebrew ,Greek, Cyrillic, Armenian, Japanese, Korean or Chinese.

SLS 1134 and Sinhala Unicode has to be corrected and revised by the ICTA based on http://www.akuru.org
Divakar
May 21, 2006, 12:33 am
Dialog plans to invest $450 million in the next two years on infrastructure, including on fiber optic backbone. It looks like private investment is coming in without carots of subsidies offered by the eSri Lanka program. Obviously, “speed of government” can’t really keep up with the dynamism of a highly profitable and expanding telecom operator. May be the regulator should start thinking of access regimes that would allow operators access to Dialog’s backbone when it is completed.

There is mention below that Dialog plans to provide broadband Internet access wirelessly relying on its backbone infrastructure.

Daily Mirror, May 20, 2006
Dominant Dialog gets bigger

To invest further $ 150 m in 2 years bringing the total to a mammoth $ 450 m

By Dianne Silva
Sri Lanka’s largest mobile communications operator, and one of Sri Lanka’s largest infrastructure investors yesterday signed a hall mark investment agreement with the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka (BOI) to invest a further Rs. 15 Billion (USD 150 Million) in the country’s telecommunications sector within the next 2 years.

The bullish investment will be targeted at Mobile, Wireless Local Loop Fixed Telephony, broadband, fibre optic backbone and International Gateway infrastructures.

A significant portion of this Investment would be towards the deployment of fibre optic backbone, broadband and fixed telephony infrastructure sectors through Dialog Telekom’s fully owned subsidiary Dialog Broadband Networks (Pvt) Ltd…

Investments in Dialog Broadband Networks are targeted at enhancing Internet penetration levels through forward investments in deployment of a national fibre optic backbone and introduction of state-of-the-art wireless technology for broadband Internet delivery” Dr. Wijayasuriya added.
Catalyst 4948
May 21, 2006, 10:52 am
Sometime back ICTA launched a series of pilots under e-Sri Lanka program. I have not heard about much about them afterwards.

A list is given at http://www.icta.lk/insidepages/Projects/PilotProjectProgram.asp

1. Sinhala Fonts (ICTA)
2. Public Registry (TBA)
3. Government Printer On-line (ICTA)
4. National Operations Room (PricewaterhouseCoopers)
5. Empowering the Workplace (Informatics Information Systems (Pvt) Ltd.)
6. Distance e-Learning (Arthur C. Clarke Institute of Modern Technology)
7. Govi Gnana System (e-Development Labs/Interblocks Ltd./ Pricewaterhouse Coopers)
8. e-Money Order (University of Colombo, School of Computing)
9. SME Portal (National Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka)
10. Iternally Displaced Persons (Finder2000 (Pvt.) Limited)
11. Legal Draftsman (e-Futures (Pvt) Ltd)
12. e-Cabinet (ICTA)
13. e-Parliament (ICTA)
14. e-Office of the President (ICTA)

Can someone enlighten me the progress of these projects? I think I have heard enough about Sinhala Fonts, but what about the e-Money Order, National Operations room, Distance Learning and Govi Gnana System? What is the current situ?

Why the Maha-somewhere project does not appear here?

Thanks.
Catalyst
Doanld Gaminitillake
May 3, 2008, 7:34 pm
SB/5/1/07 was a circular issued by the presidential secretariat re using sinhala in govt sector
I placed my objections and received the following letter. (in Sinhala)
Please visit the following link to read the contents

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8503406@N05/2461712604/

You cannot always fool the public

Donald Gaminitillake
“I set the standard”
Wasantha
May 5, 2008, 7:53 pm
Dear Donald,

We are so sorry that we took so long to realize that you are correct. How nice that you meet President’s secretary so you can explain your new method to him and he will ready to change Sinhala Unicode accordingly.

I hope we can meet soon to discuss this over a beer. Now we agree with you on unicode only minor points like Yansaya and Repaya are to be discussed. We always value your input. Do you drink beer? Why don’t you call me, so we can discuss this leisurely at White Horse or somewhere?
Doanld Gaminitillake
May 5, 2008, 9:44 pm
It is not yansaya or repaya the whole SLSI 1134 has to be amended.

If you want to meet me you all can meet me in office (Ingrin Institute of Printing and Graphics)
I can teach you what is “akuru” and its need

Donald Gaminitillake
I set the standard