IT Info

“Every ICT enabled effort in Government’s National eDevelopment plan is a step forward towards national reconciliation”. This was stated by ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) CEO Reshan Dewapura recently.

Dewapura said so while participating at the National Conference on the Role of ICT in Reconciliation held at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute for International Relations and Strategic Studies (LKIIRSS) in Colombo.

During his address at the conference, Dewapura cited several examples demonstrating the important “Role of ICT in Reconciliation with a specific focus on Bridging the Divide through ICT.”

Pointing out the great achievement reached by the Government led by His Excellency President Mahinda Rajapaksa in laying down the very foundation of reconciliation, Dewapura said on a positive note: “We are now able to reach all parts of our beautiful country; we are now able to reach all of our country’s communities. We can use ICT to accelerate this process, and take the true benefit of development to them.”

Language in ICT promoting reconciliation

Speaking further on the occasion, the ICTA CEO also gave an overview of what ICTA-initiated projects were doing island-wide to bring the benefits of ICT to the people. He pointed out that the very same process had contributed much for the promotion of reconciliation: “Almost 400 Government organisations now have a web presence with websites of varying complexity, but what is common is that all of them are in three languages. That is not just a mere facilitation, but adherence to the ICT policy of the Government.

“Projects have been implemented to enable local languages in computers and communication. “In order to take the benefits of ICT to all communities, it is imperative that the linguistic divide is bridged. Most content and websites are in English and it is not easy for adults to learn a language which is not their mother tongue.

“An enormous divide existed previously with regard to access to ICT between those who were fluent in English and those who were not. Together with all our stakeholders, we have been able to address this issue and have ensured that all aspects of ICT can be used in Sinhala and Tamil. Unicode fonts are available in local languages (both Tamil and Sinhala). Trilingual keyboards and the SLS standards are available. It is now possible to type in, send and receive emails, display website content, and sort text in both Sinhala and Tamil languages.

“All this not only ensures greater interoperability, but also gives rise to intense possibilities in opening up new communication channels and therefore contributes to the reconciliation endeavour.

“Accessing the internet in local languages has been another activity that has been successfully delivered under the eSri Lanka project recently. It is now possible to use local languages (Tamil and Sinhala) end to end, from the starting point itself, which is from typing the web address onwards. To facilitate this, top level domain names (the likes of .lk, .org, .com) in local languages had to be registered with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) (the governing body of the internet). for Sinhala and for Tamil (which are equivalent to the English .lk) were hence registered subsequent to many consultations with various stakeholders. “Sri Lanka was one of the first countries to request and register two top level domains ,xld and ,yq;if, equivalent to .lk.

“Over 100 domain names in the Tamil script have now been registered in the lk domain registry. It is now possible to use ICT in Tamil end to end on the internet and, of course, it is also possible to do the same in Sinhala as well.

Nenasala’s or Arivakam’s (telecentres) in the North and East

Underlining the service done by the flagship telecentre programme that has brought to the rural public what was once the prerogative of the elite, ICTA CEO stated: “Provision of affordable access has been a fundamental objective that ICTA has pursued from its inception. The Nenasala or Arivakam are Telecentres which are established to empower rural communities across Sri Lanka with affordable access to ICT. The programmeme aims to set-up 1000 such centres, and 700 centres have already been set-up across the country.

“In the Eastern Province 84 Nenasala centres have been established. Under the Deyata Kirula Development Programme 2013 we plan to establish another 30 centres in this province. In the Northern Province 11 Nenasala centres have been established; and we are right now in the process of setting up 40 more centres. The future plan is to add to this (i.e. in the Northern Province) by a further 50 bringing the total there to over a 100 centres. “Under ICTA’s e-Society programme, a two-day hands-on training was carried out on using content and applications developed, at the Jaffna Public Library. This was mainly aimed at the youth of the area; Training Government officers of the Jaffna District secretariat and 15 other Divisional secretariats has taken place through ICTA’s Human Resources Capacity Building Programme, where over 200 Government officers were successfully trained in ICT Skills.

eDiriya national computer literacy programme in the Jaffna District and Eastern Province

Referring to the Mahinda Chinthana-centred project aimed at making Sri Lanka reach 75 per cent ICT literary by 2016 having a major role in reconciliation Dewapura said: “ICT or Computer Literacy for citizens was conducted under the “e-Diriya” programme in the Jaffna District and in the Eastern Province. ICTA set up a fully equipped ICT training centre in Jaffna which was opened in March this year. A similar centre in the Eastern Province, in Trincomalee will be opened next month. These centres primarily function to provide ICT training for Government officers, rural school children, youth, teachers and so on.

Training for ex-combatants

Underlining a more direct reconciliation related project, Dewapura said: “To assist ex-combatants to re-integrate into civilian life, the Federation of Information Technology Industry Sri Lanka (FITIS), took the initiative to train them in ICT, English and Career Skills. This also included workshops on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. In total over 1200 ex-combatants were trained in several camps in the Jaffna and Vavuniya Districts.

IT/BPO industry in the North

Pointing out to another area where there are pathways for an upsurge of postwar development in the employment sector, the ICTA CEO added: “The prospects for the IT/BPO industry in the North are very encouraging when considering the following: there are close to 900 schools and the intake to the Jaffna Campus of the University of Jaffna is 2,500 students, out of which 80 are for computer science; the intake to the Vavuniya Campus is 275, the IT intake being 30; the Jaffna Regional Centre of the Open University of Sri Lanka offers degrees in Computer Engineering.

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