The Department of
Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY), Ministry of Communications
& IT, here today launched a portal http://localization.gov.in
and also a multilingual portal – www.vikaspedia.gov.in
/ www.vikaspedia.in
The multilingual portal – www.vikaspedia.gov.in / www.vikaspedia.in is aimed at creating a
versatile collective knowledge repository with a specific focus on domains
relevant to social and economic development. It will serve as a collaborative
content creation, sharing and utilization platform for a rainbow of
stakeholders – NGOs, government, community based organizations, knowledge
networks, CSRs, spread across the country.
Vikaspedia is
presently available in five languages – Hindi, Assamese, Marathi, Telugu and
English. It is to be made available in 22 Indian official languages in phases
in the near future. Information services related to key livelihood sectors
(initially the six sectors of Agriculture, Education, Health, Social welfare,
Energy and e-Governance) are currently available in the portal. To ensure
dissemination of information to the underserved communities across the country,
a multiple information delivery model that includes mobile based services,
apps, offline products, publications, etc is being followed. The portal is also
made mobile compliant, thereby enhancing the access and dissemination of
information through mobiles.
The portal
will be an effective mechanism to strengthen the first level service providers
to discharge services more effectively and educate the actual end user on
various issues related to livelihoods. The multi-lingual mobile Apps
such as – KVK Khoj (Krishi Vigyan Kendra locator), CSC Finder (Helps provide
information on Common Service Centres), SHELTOR (Locates nearby Government
Hostels for students), Ask-An-Expert (mobile based expert services delivery
application) and MOTHER (Mobile based maternal health alerts for pregnant
women) have relevant information packaged so as maximize the benefits of
ongoing schemes to the citizens.
Localization Portal http://localization.gov.in has been
developed for dissemination of information and providing basic localization
tools and services. The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) of the Government of
India strives to make all government services available to the citizens through
the use of ICT applications. It comprises of 31 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs),
which are further classified as state, central or integrated projects. Each MMP
has several web based applications that are meant to directly or indirectly
deliver information and/or services to the citizens. Hence, there is a need to
make these applications and services available in the official language of the
state apart from English.
To meet this goal, the Department of
Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY) has entrusted Centre for
Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) with the responsibility of assisting
various ministries and departments in localization of various applications
envisaged under their respective MMP.
C-DAC is implementing this project
through the use of Localization Projects Management Framework (LPMF) being
designed and developed over a Cloud platform. This framework will help the MMPs
in two ways:
i.
Surface
localization of the user interface and static information on a given website.
ii.
Internal
localization of online applications including linked databases.
Currently, the LPMF
supports 6 Indian languages (Bangla, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam and
Punjabi). Gradually, other languages will be included in a phased manner to
facilitate support for all the 22 official languages in the country.
To facilitate the
implementation of this project and to involve all the stakeholders, a portal “http://localization.gov.in” has been developed for
dissemination of information and providing basic localization tools and
services as follows:
i.
Basic
information on surface & internal localization as well as technical
documents on standards, guidelines and best practices.
ii.
Localization
tools such as a local language floating keyboard for integration with a
website/web application, code converter APIs for converting legacy data to
Unicode, etc.
iii.
Web
services for transliteration (English to Indian language), legacy code to
Unicode conversions, JavaScript based on-screen keyboard, Sakal Bharati Open
Type font, etc.
iv.
A
dashboard illustrating progress of localization processes across MMPs with the
help of LPMF.
The portal is expected
to serve all MMPs as an online facilitation centre for access to information on
language technology standards, essentials of the localization processes and
training being conducted by C-DAC on these topics. It will also serve as a resource
centre for essential technical documents, localization tools and web services
to help developers in localization of various applications planned under their
respective Mission Mode Project.
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KKP