Professional Documents
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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.
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.
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.
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
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
Development
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
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
Steering Committee
Technical Advisory Commitee
Project Director
Operations Manager Core Support Staff Program Managers 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.