Prologix Software Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
‘Indian Language Technologies - Bridging the Divide ’							Newsletter June, 2005
	Welcome to the June Issue of the Prologix Newsletter Bridging the digital divide in India will not be complete if the ‘language divide’ is also not bridged. India is a nation rich in diversity. Unfortunately, along with a vivid cultural diversity, we also face the problem of significant diversity and divergence in education and literacy, income levels and most importantly access to information. The following facts help highlight the above: PCs are available to only 1% of our population and those with Internet connectivity to an even lesser percentage Telephone penetration in India is approx. 200 phones per 1000 people – which is more than 20 times the corresponding figure for Internet penetration in the country. Approximately half our population is illiterate, not knowing how to read or write. In addition, approximately 50 lakh Indians suffer from all kinds of visual impairments – ranging from complete to partial blindness. Approximately 97% of India’s population continues to live in rural areas, with barely 5% of our population speaking English A combination of all of the above ensures that a majority of India still remains largely untouched by the Great Information revolution – not having even basic access to information and knowledge that is so essential in the growth of a nation and a vibrant democracy such as ours. It is also an inescapable fact that any information initiative in a country like India must necessarily be based in Indian languages and be delivered in a format that is easily accessible by all. As part of this series, we have always attempted to introduce our readers to technology that we must watch out for – that has direct relevance to the work we do and the potential to impact it strongly in the near future. In this issue, we attempt to present some interesting developments in the Indian language computing space and also highlight how Indian language technologies can play a significant role in bridging a digitally divided India. Happy Reading! ~Editor In this months issue: · Vaachak helps people by reading out their complaint status over the phone…more · The Department of Information Technology releases free Hindi Software Tools and Fonts …more · Prologix supports VAS India 2005 – the International Conference on Value Added Services – July 08, 2005… more
	Vaachak helps people by reading out their complaint status over the phone e-governance is a concept nor normally associated with the traditionally BIMARU (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) states of North India. However, almost unknown to the world, a small sleepy district in the hot and dusty plains of Uttar Pradesh has been leading the way when it comes to effective use of technology to bridge the gap between governments and common citizens. ‘LokVani’ (the voice of the people) is a unique public private partnership program initiated under the combined efforts of District Administration and National Informatics Centre in Sitapur (UP, India). The LokVani initiative gives citizens of Sitapur an opportunity to interact with the government without needing to come to any government office. While Lokvani offers several different kinds of services to local citizens (such as Land Records, Arms license application status, GPF accounts of basic education teachers, etc.), the most popular service till date amongst all these services has been the Online Public Grievance Redressal service. Through this service, any citizen of Sitapur can visit any one of several authorised kiosks set up by the Government in partnership with local cyber-cafés and computer training institutes and for a small fee register a complaint on the system. These complaints are logged into a central database and through effective monitoring by the officials of the district, are resolved/ responded to appropriately.				Acclaimed as the best TTS solution for Indian languages by several prestigious customers Today Vaachak is available in multiple variants for different environments/ applications for all kinds of customer requirements: a) Desktop: § As a SAPI compliant library for developers, ISVs, System Integrators – for desktops/ kiosks § As a Plug-in for MS Office on PCs – enables read out of documents, spreadsheets, presentations, websites, etc. (Microsoft Office 2003, Office XP, Office 2000, Office 97 compliant) b) Server: Vaachak^TM TTS Server edition - For high performance IVR/ enterprise environments – as a SAPI compliant SDK c) Low resource platforms such as PocketPC: Successfully integrated with PocketPC/ WinCE. Can be easily integrated with Handheld platforms such as Simputer, Symbian, PalmOS and other embedded platforms
	Citizens are able to check on the status of their complaints by referring to a unique 5 digit reference number issued to them automatically at the time of filing the complaint. Initially the Lokvani application was completely web based and citizens had to visit the local information kiosks to get information on the status of their requests. While this involved unnecessary travel and an additional cost for consumers, the citizen was never sure of whether a reply had been posted (or even if the reply was adequate) without checking personally on the site.		The Figure presenting the network scenario for LCSIS at Lokvani Sitapur
	Realising this problem, the District Administration of Sitapur and the Lokvani Society engaged with Prologix to build a telephone based Lokvani Complaints Status Information System (LCSIS). The LCSIS system comprises of a Vaachak enabled IVR server on which all citizens can call to get the status of their complaints and to also hear the responses if they have been filed by the concerned officers. All the data (the complaints, complaint numbers, status information, responses, etc.) are stored centrally in the NIC (National Informatics Centre) central database in Delhi. When a citizen calls into the LCSIS (on a publicly available telephone number), an IVR application greets the caller and requests for the 5 digit complaint tracking number from the user which is punched into the telephone handset. This tracking number is used to query the central database, from which the information (stored in Hindi) is retrieved. Using Vaachak, the complaint, complaint status, name of officer to whom the complaint was referred and the response (if any) are then automatically converted into clear, Hindi speech and read out to the caller. This allows callers to be able to hear out the status of their complaints and the action taken by the local administration, without actually needing to visit a Government office or any information kiosk. As a result, while the citizen’s convenience grows manifold, the transaction cost goes down as making a phone call is far cheaper than visiting any cyber kiosk. On the other hand, the administration is now able to provide 24X7 responsiveness to the citizen over both phone and web. The success of the LokVani initiative in Sitapur can be gauged from the fact that today – LokVani on an average receives more than 10,000 complaints per month, which are then speedily acted upon by the Local Administration. Impressed with this innovation, the Government of Uttar Pradesh has recently directed all District Headquarters to implement this system for their respective districts. Prologix, and it’s high quality Hindi voice for Vaachak – Rakhi, are proud to be associated with this revolutionary initiative in Uttar Pradesh and playing their small role in reducing the Divide in our society.
	The Department of Information Technology releases free Hindi Software Tools and Fonts New Delhi Monday 20 June, 2005 The Department of Information Technology launched free Hindi software tools and fonts giving strong impetus to the use of local language software for taking IT to the masses. The DIT made available free tools and fonts for public distribution upon registration on the designated website which has been launched by National Advisory Council chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Monday. She also released a free CD containing collection of Hindi Software Tools and Fonts for the public. The contents of the free CD include Hindi language true type fonts with keyboard drivers, Hindi Language Unicode Compliant Open Type Fonts, generic font codes and storage code converters for Hindi, browsers, spell checkers, Transliteration tools, etc. This free CD also contains the Vaachak Office Plug-in – an innovative application built around Vaachak 2.1.0 – the version of Vaachak for Desktop based systems. This application allows users of Microsoft Office on Windows Operating Systems to be able to hear all Hindi documents in MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook and Internet Explorer on their PCs. This can be of immense use to busy professionals who have no time to read, visually and educationally handicapped people, for people regularly involved in proofing or reading through long documents in Hindi, for heavy MS Excel users as a reconciliation and data verification tool as well as by presenters wanting to add an interesting ‘extra’ to their presentations! The application is further made powerful by supporting almost all popular Hindi fonts and font encoding standards as well as today’s modern Unicode, ISCII and Roman Transliteration input in Hindi.					UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Union Minister for Communication and Information Technology Dayanidhi Maran hold compact discs of Hindi software tools and fonts at the launch of Hindi Software and Tools Website in New Delhi on Monday.
						Prologix decided to offer this component to the DIT as a means of extending the reach of this powerful application to all segments of society – and particularly to those users who are disadvantaged by their lack of sight or literacy and thus unable to get access to any kind of information. The Office Plug-in is applications that plugs in effortlessly into the Microsoft Office suite and helps users get the capability to hear out all their documents in Word, Excel and PowerPoint as well as get the inability to hear out Hindi text present on a website. The free CD will be distributed through registration on a new website connected also to the existing one, which is available at www.ildc.gov.in or www.ildc.in.
Prologix supports VAS India 2005 – the International Conference on Value Added Services July 08, 2005 VAS India 2005 - the international conference on value added services is going to be held at Le Meridien, New Delhi on 8th July 2005. Vaachak from Prologix is associated with this international conference as an Associate Sponsor. Value Added Services are proving to be amongst the most important differntiators for operators and also the most promising services for providing an answer to falling AARPUs. This conference aims to discover the current trends in Value Added Services and predict their future direction. VAS India 2005 will see insightful discussions on various value-added telecom services (VAS) and solutions in India, such as call centres, telemarketing, customer relationship management (CRM), interactive voice response (IVR), VoIP, SMS, MMS, mobile applications, and sales and distribution of telecom products and services.								VAS India 2005 Date: July 8, 2005 Venue: Le Meridien, New Delhi Associate Sponsor Meet Vinamra Agarwal at VAS India 2005 Session III VAS: Challenges & Opportunities Time: 1630 – 1800 hrs
The conference is expected to bring together over 300 delegates from all over India. There is international delegate participation also delegates would be dominated by key professionals from the mobile operators, service providers and enterprises. Additionally, VAS India 2005 will have over 20 speakers who will address 4 sessions in an action packed conference. Vaachak and Prologix are associated with the event on account of our strong belief that Indian language speech technologies and Indian language based services are essential for the mass level success of any telecom/ service initiative. During the conference Vinamra Agarwal, VP Business Development, Prologix Software will be making a presentation on Challenges and Opportunities in VAS with a focus on how reduction of the Digital Divide can become a profitable venture for operators through innovatively designed Indian language based Value Added Services.
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