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Request for Proposals

Advanced Technology Program in Human Language Technologies 1 Introduction


The National ICT R&D Fund invites applications from Pakistani institutions/organizations for the establishment of an Advanced Technology Program in Human Language Technologies (the Program) as per the operational model described in this RFP. Institutions/organizations desirous of hosting and managing the proposed Program are requested to submit their proposals to the ICT R&D Fund Islamabad by 1500 hrs on 09th April, 2012 as per the prescribed format.

2 GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS
2.1 Proposal Submission
a. Proposals will be accepted and evaluated using a two stage process. In the first stage, technical proposals from the host institutions/organizations are being solicited to be evaluated against the evaluation criteria given below. Please note that Financial Proposals are not required at this stage of the process. b. Financial proposals will be solicited from shortlisted institutions/organizations in the second stage. Final award will be on the basis of combined technical and financial score in the following manner: Weight Technical Proposal 70% Funding Requirements 30% Total 100% c. Proposals shall be submitted in English language. d. The proposals shall be clear and elaborative. Different sections of the proposals shall be numbered and separated using color separators, flags or tags. The proposals shall be prepared without any interlineations or overwriting. e. Applicants may request in writing for clarification of any of the provisions of this RFP up till 07 (seven) days before the submission date. All queries may be sent to sed@ictrdf.org.pk. f. The Fund reserves the right to accept or reject any or all of the proposals submitted without assigning any reason thereof. g. The costs of preparing the proposal and of negotiating any subsequent funding, including visits for discussion with the Fund are not reimbursable.

2.2 Pre-bid Conference


A pre-bid conference is planned for the 5th of March, 2012. All applicants who wish to participate in the conference must register by sending an email to sed@ictrdf.org.pk. The time and venue for the conference will be communicated to all registered applicants through email.

2.3 Technical Proposals


Technical Proposals shall be in compliance with the requirements laid down in the RFP and the proposed Program model. The technical proposal shall include the following: a. A covering letter from the head of the applicant organization or his authorized representative. b. Details of Core technical team (at host and satellite institutions/organizations) for proposed Program clearly identifying the team lead. Resumes of the core technical team are to be provided. c. Experience in conducting research in the subject area. d. Details of Current setup/facilities that can be utilized in setting up the Program, e.g. an existing lab. e. Details of additional built up space/infrastructure/facilities that the host and satellite institutions are willing to commit to the Program. f. Details of proposed/existing national and international collaborations/affiliations in the proposed program area with industry, academia and government (Pl provide supporting documents). g. List of satellite research facilities/collaborative arrangements under the proposed program within the country. The satellite institutions shall be other independent institutions/organizations and not the campuses/offices of the host institution. The host institution must provide details of at least two institutional level collaborative arrangements one of which must be outside its own geographical region in the Program domain. For the purpose of this RFP the country is divided into eight geographical regions Lahore, Karachi, Punjab (excluding Lahore, Rawalpindi/Islamabad), Sindh (excluding Karachi), KP, Balochistan, GB and AJK, and Rawalpindi/Islamabad. h. Details of research work published in international conferences and journals as well as details of any IP created/patented during the past five years in the subject area. i. Plans for R&D under the Program umbrella. 3-5 projects need to be identified that will be undertaken in the first three years. j. Implementation plan k. Plans for making the Program sustainable after the first three years. l. Contact List

2.4 Proposal Submission


a. Each proposal shall be submitted as two printed copies (one marked as ORIGINAL, the other as COPY) and one soft copy on a CD or DVD (MS Word compatible file format). b. Proposals must be sealed and clearly marked. c. Technical proposals must be delivered at the address given below before 1500 hrs (PST), on 09th April, 2012. Solicitation and Evaluation Department National ICT R&D Fund 6th Floor, HBL Tower, Jinnah Avenue Blue Area, Islamabad, Pakistan 2

Tel: 051-9215360-64 Email: sed@ictrdf.org.pk

2.5 Evaluation Criteria


The evaluation committee appointed by Fund will evaluate the technical proposals on the basis of their compliance with the RFP, the proposed Program model and by applying the evaluation criteria and the point system as specified below. A technical proposal shall be rejected at this stage if it fails to achieve the minimum score indicated in table below:
Table 1: Technical Evaluation Criteria and Marks

No. a. b.

Requirements Core technical team for proposed Program clearly identifying the team lead. Resumes of the core technical team to be provided. Experience in conducting research in the subject area with details of research work published in international conferences and journals as well as details of patents filed nationally and internationally during the past five years in the subject area. Details of existing/proposed national and international collaborations/affiliations in the proposed program area with industry, and other domain stakeholders (Pl provide supporting documents). List of facilities, resources and technical HR being committed by each partner need to be provided.

Marks 75 100

c.

175

d.

R&D Plans under Program umbrella with 3-5 initial projects clearly identified (Pl provide a 500 word summary of each project). Maximum weight will be given to specific IP and products that may be developed under the umbrella of the Program. (For example: develop a text to speech conversion software for Urdu language or one of the regional languages). Program implementation plans including plans for making the Program sustainable after the first three years.

175

e.

175 700 455

Total Marks Minimum qualification score (65%)

2.6 Financial Proposals


Institutions shortlisted on the basis of their technical submissions will be asked to submit a Financial Proposal with details of the annual budgetary requirements for a period of three years.

3 TERMS OF REFERENCE
3.1 Rationale
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) hold a significant promise for socio-economic impact for our nation, improving services, incubating innovation and increasing national harmony. However, limiting ICTs to English excludes almost 90% of Pakistanis, who cannot communicate in this foreign language, from the potential benefits. Thus, to realize even a proportion of the enormous advantage which can be gained by deploying ICTs, useful applications and, more importantly, content must be available in the local languages. In Pakistan more than 66 languages are spoken, making Pakistan a very linguistically diverse country. Enabling ICTs in so many languages requires a considered and substantial effort. The next significant challenge is to provide means and technologies to the Pakistani population to enable them to use and benefit from ICTs. This is further complicated by low levels of literacy and by low PC/Internet penetration in the Pakistani society - only about 10% Pakistanis use internet, of which only 0.5% have personal computers. Thus any ICT based solutions/applications must be available through mobile phones, which now have manifold more penetration than regular computers. Addressing these challenges requires a considered, large scale and long term effort, with significant involvement of the public sector, because even though much of the technology is essential for public use, it may not have immediate commercial potential. Realizing these limitations, governments in other countries have set up public departments and organizations to cater to this important area of research and development. Some examples in Asia include the Technology Development in Indian Languages (TDIL) program of Ministry of IT, Government of India (http://ildc.in/), Human Language Technology Center at NECTEC, an initiative by National Agency for Science and Technology, Government of Thailand (www.hlt.nectec.or.th), MASTAR project at National Institute of ICT by Government of Japan (http://mastar.jp/index-e.html), Research Division of Department of IT, Ministry of Communication, Government of Bhutan (http://www.dit.gov.bt/content/about-us), National Language in IT of High Level Commission in IT, Government of Nepal (http://hlcit.gov.np/content.php?cms_id=22), etc. Though there has been some work in Pakistan in this area during the past decade, most of the effort has focused primarily on Urdu. Currently, there is very limited capacity to do research and development in this area both in academia and in the industry, which has also been a factor in the limited growth of this area. In this context, this RFP is proposing a National Program in Human Language Technologies which can holistically and methodologically address these fundamental needs of the Pakistani society.

3.2 Proposed Objectives of the Program


The Program will aim to achieve the following objectives: Create standards, linguistics resources, technologies and applications in local languages for assisting and promoting effective and widespread use of ICTs across Pakistan

Proliferate the technologies and applications developed for creating and using local language content for the socio-economic development of Pakistani citizens and communities Explore avenues for capacity building for and commercialization of such technologies, thus contributing to developing a vibrant industry around local language computing and content

3.3 Proposed Functions


a. Technical R&D Development and release of core technology for Pakistani languages including - Core and annotated corpus - Lexica - Advanced annotations and lexica, including initial wordnets and verb-nets Development of text to speech and speech to text convertors Development of an Urdu Search Engine Basic machine translation between English, Urdu and other local languages Integration of local machine language computing into commercial applications b. Human Resource Development To train a pool of telecom professionals who will be responsible for conducting research and developing applications in the area of human language technologies in Pakistan. c. Industry Representation To help establish and maintain Pakistans regional leadership in the human language technologies, through active collaborations with national and international players. Participation in international events, conferences and standards meetings.

3.4 Expected Program Output


Various types of Program activities and the associated output targets are as follows:
Table 2: Program Output

Proposed Activities Trainings

Expected Output Trained human resources

Suggested Targets Core groups of 30-40 researchers/professionals will be trained over a span of three years. Additional 200-400 researchers/professionals would be trained through short courses, workshops and seminars. 6-8 conference publications and 4-6 journal publications per year would be published. Additionally a few patents would also be filed.

Research

Research publications Patents

Development

Commercialization of research New products Industry Collaborations and needs analysis

Partnerships would be established with local and/or foreign industry players to productize new and innovative ideas and solutions. To reach a level where the revenues generated are sufficient to sustain the Program in future. Local language APIs, tools, plug-ins, web services, etc for integration in e-gov and commercial applications. Web-services Training materials and resources

Support to local industry and society

Localization Development of value added products and services

Events

Local and international conferences Workshops and seminars International collaborations leading to joint R&D activities Academia-industry collaborations Participations in Standards Meetings

To conduct at least one conference and 2-3 workshops and seminars per year. To partner with other such initiatives around the world and collaborate in joint areas of interest. This should result in a few joint publications each year. Student exchange programs may also be explored.

Collaborations

3.5 Proposed Operational Framework


A hub and spoke structure, comprising of a partnership of a host and a number of satellite organizations/institutions (academic, research and commercial) is proposed for the Program. These institutions will provide free of cost space for the Program while the Fund will provide seed funding for sustaining the Program operations for the first three years including grants for equipment and for some initial R&D projects. Individual R&D projects and other activities will be distributed across the Program partners including IT industry and academic institutions, etc. The utilization of the infrastructure, equipment and facilities under the umbrella of the proposed Program will be open to all industry stakeholders/government agencies/academic institutions/researchers. The host institution or its Program affiliates will not be able to claim exclusivity in the use of the Program equipment and resources. 3.5.1 Proposed HR Model The Program will have a core team comprising of a paid full time Project Director who will be assisted by a number of Program Managers, trainers and administrative staff. In addition, there will be a core team of qualified R&D professionals that will direct and manage all R&D activities. The Program will hire additional research and project staff for its projects on a need basis. 6

Figure 1: Proposed Program Management Structure

Steering Committee
Technical Advisory Commitee

Project Director
Operations Manager Core Support Staff Program Managers Projects

Satellite Facility Program Manager


Projects

Satellite Facility Program Manager


Projects

3.5.2 Proposed Management Structure The Program will be managed by a Steering Committee consisting of representatives from the following: The National ICT R&D Fund/MoIT ICT industry Academia Print/Media associations Language Authorities Host Institution/Organization

The Steering Committee will also constitute a Technical Advisory Committee that will look after the technical work being carried out at the Program. This committee will also set the future technical direction for the Program activities.

3.6 Proposed Program Funding


The Program will be provided funds for access network equipment setup, personnel and operations costs and initial funding for a few R&D projects. The host institution will be asked to provide free of cost built-up space for the Program. In addition, leading equipment vendors will be encouraged to donate equipment and resources to the Program. The permissible budgetary heads for the programs and operations for first three years are as follows: a. Tech R&D b. Testing and industry support c. HRD d. Industry Participation/Events and Collaborations e. Set-up and Operations Please note that a budget/financial proposal is not required at this stage. END OF RFP

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