Two ICTA-initiated projects bag World Summit Award 2009

Two ICTA-initiated projects submitted to United Nations’ World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) for World Summit Award (WSA) 2009 have bagged two awards in two different categories. The GIC project and the project termed “Impaired Aid” which is a suite of application to help the visually and aurally impaired were the two projects which thus won the prestigious World Summit Award 2009.

A visually impaired person using the software for reading the Sinhala newspaper

While the Government Information Centre (GIC) project was submitted under ICTA’s Re-engineering Government programme, “Impaired Aid” was developed by Jinasena Properties Ltd. under ICTA’s e-Society programme.
WSA 2009 had attracted 560 applications under eight categories from 157 countries of which 545 were ‘jurable’. There were more than 50 entries under each of the eight categories, namely, e-Government and Institutions, e-Health and Environment, e-Entertainment and Games, e-Culture and Heritage, e-Learning and Education, e-Inclusion and Participation, e-Science and Technology and e-Business and Commerce.
The grand jury including eminent multimedia and e-Content experts from 34 countries met in New Delhi, India from April 1-8 to evaluate the submissions.
Sri Lanka made its presence felt at the WSA by winning two awards – both of which were ICTA projects.

Peter A. Bruck

GIC Project
The GIC, 1919, was among the winners in the e-Government and Institution Category.
In a letter sent to ICTA Prof. Dr. Peter A. Bruck Chairman, WSA Board of Directors, says: “your product has been evaluated by the Grand Jury as a world wide example of outstanding e-Content!”
Writing to ICTA as the Chairman of the World Summit Award Prof. Bruck says further: “you and your product have been entered as a national best from your home country in the WSA 09 contest”.
The Government Information Centre (GIC) is the Government Call Centre and the Web Portal which provides information about services provided by the Government Departments to citizens of Sri Lanka and others.
GIC Call Centre is operational from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on all the 365 days of the year and information could be obtained in Sinhala, Tamil or English. The number to dial for this is 1919.
Making information retrieval more hassle-free and easy to for anyone, the GIC provides callers with information regarding day-to-day issues such as procedures of obtaining identity cards, driving licences etc.
If the caller dials 1919 from any phone, anywhere he/she is provided with a friendly, courteous and accurate service by a well trained staff in the language of his/her choice (Sinhala, Tamil or English).
The Call Centre is supplemented by the website (www.gic.gov.lk) which contains the information and is accessible to citizens who have internet connectivity.
Impaired Aid Project
In the e-Inclusion and Participation Category “Impaired Aid”, a project developed by Jinasena Properties/Ceylon School for the Deaf and Blind through under the banner of the e-Society Development Initiative Partnership Assistance Programme, was placed first in the category of e-Inclusion and Participation.
Moreover representatives from Egypt, India and Bangladesh expressed serious interest in collaborating with ICTA to take this suite of products to their countries. Egypt will follow up with the UNDP, Cairo on incorporating a collaboration project with Sri Lanka on using ICT for the benefit of the disadvantaged into their ongoing programme. ICTA says that the bagging of the World Award by “Impaired Aid” demonstrates that in the area of ICT for disabilities, Sri Lanka displays a level of technical and social innovation on a par with that of the most developed countries.
For those who are visually impaired, the only means of reading and writing a language is with the use of Braille. The realisation of this has led to the development of a software engine which converts Sinhala to Braille and back.
The same technology was used to develop software to give access to Sinhala newspapers. The software will convert the digital text to Braille and it can then be read on a dynamic Braille Display by the visually impaired.
With this conversion engine the blind can also communicate by e-mail with sighted people enabling them to communicate by e-mail with government officers as well as with sighted members of the community.
Impaired Aid also addresses the needs of the aurally handicapped community.
A profoundly deaf person can neither speak nor read nor write a language. As a consequence, the development of academic skills is hindered by this lack of literacy. Thus profoundly deaf persons are at a greater disadvantage than even those who are visually impaired.
A child with hearing entering grade 1 has a vocabulary of 3,000 words, while a hearing impaired child has a vocabulary of almost zero!
Impaired Aid has successfully developed software for these students. For vocabulary building, two levels of software packages (level 1 and 2) have already been developed in Sinhala. Special ICT tools are used to improve delivery of subject content in the classroom.
Computer aided classroom teaching methods are used and for this textbook lessons are converted to multimedia slides.