C-DAC launches ‘janabhaaratii’© Project Localization of Free/Open Source Software

C-DAC launches ‘janabhaaratii’^© Project Localization of Free/Open Source Software

http://www.cdac.in/html/press/4q04/prs_rl158.asp

Mumbai, October 11, 2004

Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) has announced the launch of its “janabhaaratii” project entitled “Localization of Free/ Open Source Software: Development, Deployment and Community Building” to contribute to the community efforts in developing a software suite based on GNU/Linux to be made available in Indian languages. The project is being funded by the Technology Development in Indian Languages (TDIL) group of the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and IT, Government of India.

The primary objective of the project is to enable the wide spread use of Indian language computing through Free/Open Source systems and applications localized in Indian languages. It aims at inviting, building and supporting community initiatives to produce and disseminate free/ open source software systems, applications and content to help proliferate the use of IT in our society, breaking language barriers and through affordable means to bridge the so-called digital divide. The project will cover the development of technology to suit Indian languages, its dissemination and deployment into diverse areas such as home use, mass applications, education, rural areas, infokiosks, cybercafes, e-governance, content creation and so on.

The project inherits and will enhance the access and usability of the resources and capabilities garnered by C-DAC in Indian language technologies over the last 15 years. C-DAC, Mumbai has been at the forefront of the Indian language technology mission with its INDIX project for making GNU/Linux operating systems specifically intelligent about indic scripts and provide the world with a more generic approach to deal with these complex scripts. (Many of the fonts developed under the INDIX project are now also available to the public from the TDIL website-http://www.tdil.mit.gov.in/download/openfonts.htm)

Further, the project stands on the shoulders of several teams working on the localization of GNU/Linux, namely, the IITs, IIITs, Indlinux, ankurbangla, HBCSE (TIFR), FSF India, and Corporations like IBM and so on. Several Resource Centres supported by the TDIL have also stacked up a large amount of localization resources. The project envisages the threading together of these efforts, to present to the community a suite of software components in ready usable form through Open Source under GPL/LGPL licences.

Dr. Alka Irani, C-DAC, Mumbai is the chief investigator for the project. Prof. Jitendra Shah from Veermata Jijabai Technical Institute (VJTI) will also be collaborating on the project, and has joined C-DAC, Mumbai.

The nature and the scope of the project being such, C-DAC also extends an invitation to language specialists, linguists, computer specialists, users, governments (Centre and States), academia (faculty and students) and others to join this mission and bring the benefits of the IT revolution to the majority of the population.

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Enable Indian language typing support to the existing e-mail portal of Satyam Infoway (SIFY)

Enable Indian language typing support to the existing e-mail portal of Satyam Infoway (SIFY)

http://www.cdac.in/html/about/success/sify-mail-gist.asp

Problem Statement

Enable users to send & receive e-mails in regional languages viz.
Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, and Telugu through the existing e-mail facility of mail.sify.com.

Solution:

A customized iPlugin was developed and delivered as per SIFYs requirement, which enables users to type their e-mail in 11 regional languages. The regional languages supported are Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Hindi, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, and Telugu.

When a client logs into mail.sify.com with his e-mail id for the first time, he / she has to select the language in which he / she wants to type the e-mail. Based on the language selected the user will be automatically prompted to download the required language components. This is a one-time process for that particular language. The next time onwards the user can simply log in, select language and start typing.

The components that are downloaded one time at the client end (e.g. for Hindi, Marathi) are
DV_GistFontResourcesforWeb Control: 100KB
iPlugin Control : 164KB

A floating keyboard in the respective language also assists in composing the e-mail. When the e-mail is sent to the respective destination, if the fonts already exist at the recipients end, then the data is properly displayed. However, in case the required fonts are not available then the recipient has to download and execute the .exe attached with the mail which copies the requisite fonts to the fonts folder of the recipients machine. This is again a one-time activity.

Acknowledging the quality of the product developed and the capable services rendered by the GIST group of C-DAC, Pune, Mr K Bhaskar, DGM-Technical, Sify Limited says It has been a pleasure in choosing this product and working with you in understanding and implementing this solution. We have now provided language mail for our users in mail.sify.com

System: Linux as server and PHP as scripting language. The client side computer on which the typing is done, uses Windows OS and IE as the browser.

 

 

eGovernance through Regional Languages:: 5% Speak English::95% Speak 18 different languages

eGovernance through Regional Languages

http://www.cdac.in/html/egov/article.asp

Out of a billion population, there are only 5% people in India who know or speak English, with balance 95% (950 million) people speaking or practicing in at least 18 different officially recognized languages. This poses both a challenge and an opportunity.

With increasing recognition of information technology in catalyzing economic activity and efficient governance, countries have benefited through eGovernance. In India, application of Indian languages on computers has driven eGovernance initiatives. C-DAC has applied language technologies successfully to a number of eGovernance solutions to deliver efficient Government Services in a transparent manner.

Practically all world economies have recognized importance of information technology in catalyzing economic activity, in efficient governance and in human resource development. They have, therefore, made significant investments and successfully integrated it with the development process in reaping the benefits of the information technology revolution that is taking place globally, to their society. In India, likewise, these developments have impacted the Industrial, Education, Service and Government sectors, and their influence on various applications is increasingly being felt of late.

As the era of digital economy is evolving, a significant impact of these developments has been felt in eGovernance. The questions often asked in the context are:

 

• How government can become more responsive and accessible?
• How can the government enhance its role as a catalyst of economic growth?
• How can one provide better Government services? and
• How can the Government use advanced technologies for transferring benefits to the society in terms of improving health care, education, administrative and citizen interface services?

eGovernance consequently has emerged as a technologically driven methodology to realize economic prosperity leading to transparency, providing information speedily to all citizens, improving administrative efficiency, improving public services, higher velocity of business, improved productivity and an exciting business opportunity.

In a large, geographically dispersed, demographic multilingual country India, the common thread in implementing and achieving these basic objectives of eGovernance has been the development and adoption of language computing tools and methodologies. The Government officials in various provinces, the non-government functionaries across the country and the people, mostly use their own language in day-to-day work, be it in Government administration at various levels, in business, in profession, in services or in school education. Thus, if the fruits of information technology revolution have to spread to all these participating members, in Government and public, it is best done through the use of computers in their own languages.

Out of a billion population, there are only 5% people in India who know or speak English, with balance 95% (950 million) people speaking or practicing in at least 18 different officially recognized languages. This poses both a challenge and an opportunity.

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) has made pioneering contributions in developing Indian language tools with natural language processing, and in evolving script and font standards through its GIST technology, to enable and spread use of computers in various languages. It accordingly took up the initiative of developing important eGovernance solutions in Indian languages, which impact Government and the citizens both. This initiative started in 1997 and has grown to a significant extent by the end of 2001. Significant parameters of this initiative were:

 

• Improve government’s own functioning
• Provide better service to citizens in a transparent manner
• Reduce hassles, corruption and drudgery in various government bodies – public interactive functions

Significant information technology based applications developed and successfully commissioned under this initiative are:

 

• Public Works Department (Maharashtra State) – Covered Works, Accounts, Employees and Tender management modules networking the various 250 state offices to lead to an improved, transparent and efficient system of works services. Involved an outlay of Rs. 10.5 crores (U.S. $ 2.0 Million) to address Works Services of an average Rs. 2500 crore (US$ 500 Million) of the PWD – Maharashtra. This is now proposed for other States also.

• Stamp Registration (Maharashtra and U.P. States) – Provided on-line property registration, valuation and report generation across 366 offices at various state administrative units, reducing time from several days to mere 20 minutes for an individual, and increasing number of registered documents from 16 to 40 per day with 10 – 15% revenue increase. Involved an outlay of Rs. 5.5 crores (US$ 1 Million) to address a Statewide annual revenue of Rs. 2000 crores (US$ 400 Million).

• Municipal Corporations (Karnataka) – Computerized major functions of property tax valuation/collection, issue and record of death/birth certificates, water supply billing, consumer complaints and internal MIS functions providing improved citizen services. Involved an outlay of Rs. 2.5 crores (US$ 0.5 Million) in the first phase of six Corporations to address a budget of Rs. 2000 crores (US$ 400 Million).

• Octroi collection (Nashik – Maharashtra) – Dispensed with cash collection at remote check posts, providing instant valuation, receipt and reconciliation of accounts in a transparent manner. Total outlay Rs. 60 lakhs (US$ 0.1 Million).

• Decision Support System (Andhra Pradesh State) – Implemented a data warehouse of land and person data of 60 million population to enable well informed, timely and accurate policy decisions by the Government officials across various departments. Involved an outlay of Rs. 5 crores (US$ 1 Million) to address the total State data.

• Hospital Management System (Specialty and Government Hospitals) - Implemented to improve Healthcare services for the patients. Involved an outlay of Rs. 1.5 crore (US$ 0.3 Million) over two hospitals of 500 beds and 1500 beds respectively.

• GIS based Land Management (Industrial Development Corporations) - Implemented at a cost of Rs. 55 lakhs (US$ 0.11 Million) to provide web-based access to land data covering allotment, transfer, mortgage, surrender, etc. of industrial development units, in the particular case for MIDC, Maharashtra.

• Archives Computerization - This application enables effective scanning and archival of various types of old documents with proper enhancement, indexing and retrieval facilities. This application has been successfully deployed for Department of Archives, Govt. of Maharashtra.

All these applications have been very effective in the achievement of their objective, have involved significant technology component covering web, data warehousing, database architecture, Geomatics, Scan/Archive, advanced software tools, and applied in a most innovative manner, ensured replicability to other organizations by building a licensable software product. These also enabled, through business process re-engineering, an effective organizational change to ease their functions and offer a more productive service to the intended beneficiaries. Their relevance has been equally brought about by providing language technology component of significance to the target user group(s), which have broken any language barriers by enabling users to interact with computers in their own languages.

C-DAC groups were organized activity-wise to implement various development projects that were commissioned during the period 1997-2001. The groups comprised of approximately 100 software professionals who worked over an approximate budget of Rs. 30 crores (US$ 6 million) to address the direct business of over Rs. 6500 crores (US$ 1.3 Billion) of the State Governments annually. This initiate is now being spread to other parts of the country to similarly provide effective solutions and services.

C-DAC is an institution of a 575 regular plus 175 contract staff of high skills in advanced information technologies, training and business activities. It is an autonomous scientific institution of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Govt. of India. It currently operates on an annual budget of Rs. 100 crores (US$ 20 million) and works with a network of 100 plus partner institutions in the private enterprise for providing training and support services countrywide.

Set up over a decade ago, as India’s national initiative for design, development and delivery of high performance computing (supercomputer systems) and solutions based on parallel processing technology, C-DAC has over the years diversified its activities, transferring the expertise it acquired and technologies it developed in the high-end computing to develop and deploy Information Technology (IT) based solutions in various sectors of economy. Through this approach, it has maintained a balance between developing strategic technologies needed in the country in the high performance computing area for achieving self-reliance, and addressing mission critical problems in the science and engineering fields on one hand, and using expertise developed to commercialize its technologies and products to meet the requirements in various sectors of economy on the other.