Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka

If you knew English, then you were able to browse content or to type web addresses on the Internet.

However, if a user wanted to use the Internet with a different script such as Sinhala or Tamil, then one’s experience in using the Internet would not have been so smooth or so easy. 

But this will change shortly. Sri Lanka agreed on the two top level domain names .ලංකා (.lanka) and .இலங்கை (.ilangei) through a public consultative process. Sri Lanka’s request for the top level domains was approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on 23rd March. 

Reshan Dewapura, COO, of the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) said “It was imperative that the subject of IDNs is addressed as soon as possible.  This subject was being addressed in the international arena and it was necessary for Sri Lanka to define the equivalent of Sri Lanka’s top level domain .LK in the Sinhala and Tamil”. 

The Head of the LK Domain Registry, Prof. Gihan Dias said "Although the process will take a few more weeks, these domains will soon be operational, and you can type වෙබ්.රජය.ලංකා to go to the Government website". 

The Program Manager in charge of this area at the ICT Agency, stated that "Localization and adapting the computing environment to Sri Lanka’s needs, has been going on for some time, at present spearheaded by ICTA, and before that by its predecessor CINTEC, in partnership with many stakeholders such as the Sri Lanka Standards Institution, the University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC), the University of Moratuwa, the Department of Official Languages and the private sector."

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