Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka ready for providing optimum service via mobile phone

Thursday, 10 May 2012 13:25

“With mobile phones becoming integrated into our lives their use for providing public service is becoming more and more pervasive”, says ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) CEO Reshan Dewapura. He said so while participating at the internationally renowned World Summit Awards (WSA) ICT conference held in Cairo, recently.

ICTA CEO shared the success of the e-Development programme in Sri Lanka with the world ICT leaders. He asserted that the Government was ready to provide key citizen services via the mobile phone within the next two to four years.

“In Sri Lanka, we have a great potential for providing public services via the mobile phone. We have technology, creativity and a growing demand for such services,” he explained.

ICTA CEO was among the distinguished ICT leaders in the world who shared the common platform of the World Summit Awards in Egypt. More than 40 countries participated in the conference, which honoured the best e-content creators around the world in 2012.

Explaining the ICT road map of the country, Dewapura says that the past experience will help harness a fruitful future in mobile technology. Sri Lankan talents and innovations will induce further growth.

'Dividends of ICT must be taken to the village in Sinhala and Tamil'

Tuesday, 08 May 2012 14:49

“ ‘If the dividends of ICT are to be taken to every village, every citizen and every business’ it has to be done in Sinhala and Tamil”. This was stated by ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) Board Member and Local Language Initiative (LLI) Chairman Dr. R. B. Ekanayake.

Dr. Ekanayake said so while participating at a multi-pronged launch that took place at Jaic Hilton, Colombo recently (Wednesday May 02).

Presenting an overview of the LLI during the past seven years Dr. Ekanayake said ‘If the dividends of ICT are to be taken to every village, every citizen and every business’ it had to be done in Sinhala and Tamil. Explaining the rationale for the LLI Dr. Ekanayake said: “Most people in Sri Lanka use Sinhala and Tamil. Most are not conversant in English. English is necessary but learning a foreign language takes time. The ICTA Local Language Initiative (LLI) therefore had to be implemented immediately after ICTA was set up”.

This implementation took place and in the recent past several projects have been completed under ICTA’s “Local Language Initiative” and the Wednesday event was held to launch the following:-

‘Multitude of Sinhala Tamil blogs show power of technology for innovation’

Thursday, 03 May 2012 10:09

“The multitude of Sinhala and Tamil blogs available today shows how technology provokes innovation”, says ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA). ICTA sources said so referring to the launch of a number of innovations for users of ICT in Sinhala and Tamil that takes place today (May 02, 2012).

The multi-pronged launch that makes the fruits of concerted endeavours available to users of ICT in Sinhala and Tamil, occurs at Jaic Hilton Colombo at 4.30 p.m. on Wednesday.

In the recent past several projects have been completed under ICTA’s “Local Language Initiative” and the Wednesday event is being held to launch the following:-

The third revision of the Sri Lanka Sinhala Character Code for Information Interchange which has been approved by SLSI as a Sri Lanka Standard, SLS 1134 : 2011. This version includes encoding for Sinhala numerals. This is to be launched in partnership with the Sri Lanka Standards Institution (SLSI).
Six new stylised Sinhala fonts have been designed by the trainees who underwent ICTA’s font development training. – there has been resistance from various sectors towards using Unicode fonts citing the fact that only “serious” Unicode fonts were available. Now several Unicode Sinhala fonts of different styles have been developed.
A new Unicode Tamil font ‘Sri Tamil’ .
Six new stylized Tamil fonts - “Chemmoli” series.
A book on how to develop Sinhala and Tamil fonts.
A keyboard driver for using Apple Mac with a Unicode Sinhala font - Mac Bhashitha.