Sri Lanka takes lead in multi-lingual internet initiatives

Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the UN in Geneva, Ambassador Ravinatha Aryasinha said Sri Lanka had taken a lead in multi-lingual internet initiatives, by putting in place technical conditions to facilitate the presence of its local languages on the internet and encouraging the development of relevant Sinhala and Tamil content, thus ensured cultural and linguistic diversity and identity. 

Ambassador Aryasinha made this observations when he addressed the high level segment of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS+10) Forum 2015 on May 26th in Geneva.  

Ambassador Aryasinha said the recently released Global Information Technology Report (GITR 2015) of the World Economic Forum placed Sri Lanka in 65th position of the Networked Readiness Index, among 143 economies, which is a noteworthy jump of 11 places and added that Sri Lanka continues to maintain its position as the foremost among South Asian nations. He further said that the internationally acclaimed “e-Sri Lanka Development initiative”, supported by the World Bank has enabled deployment of Information & Communications Technologies (ICT)s for technological and institutional transformation of key sectors of the economy of Sri Lanka. 

He noted that Sri Lanka is presently directing its efforts at leveraging ICTs to help women entrepreneurs and up-skill women employed in foreign countries. He also noted that in the Post 2015 era, the country will build further on the gains it has already made by improving citizen access to government through the Programme ‘Connected Citizen 2018’ making it possible for citizens to engage with the government through electronic means which would include the mobile.