rfp draft hlt rfp dated 06 march 2012

8/2/2019 RFP Draft HLT RFP Dated 06 March 2012

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Request for Proposals

Advanced Technology Program in Human Language Technologies

1 IntroductionThe National ICT R&D Fund invites applications from Pakistani institutions/organizations for theestablishment 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 INSTRUCTIONS2.1 Proposal Submission

a. Proposals will be accepted and evaluated using a two stage process. In the first stage, technicalproposals 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 secondstage. 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 [email protected].

f. The Fund reserves the right to accept or reject any or all of the proposals submitted withoutassigning any reason thereof.

g. The costs of preparing the proposal and of negotiating any subsequent funding, including visitsfor discussion with the Fund are not reimbursable.

2.2 Pre-bid ConferenceA 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 [email protected]. The time and venue for the

conference will be communicated to all registered applicants through email.
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


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2.3 Technical ProposalsTechnical 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 satelliteinstitutions are willing to commit to the Program.

f. Details of proposed/existing national and international collaborations/affiliations in theproposed program area with industry, academia and government (Pl provide supporting

documents).

g. List of satellite research facilities/collaborative arrangements under the proposed programwithin 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 ofany 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 beundertaken in the first three years.

j. Implementation plank. Plans for making the Program sustainable after the first three years.l. Contact List

2.4 Proposal Submissiona. 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


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Tel: 051-9215360-64

Email: [email protected]

2.5 Evaluation CriteriaThe 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 thepoint 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. Requirements Marks

a. Core technical team for proposed Program clearly identifying the teamlead. Resumes of the core technical team to be provided.

75

b. Experience in conducting research in the subject area with details ofresearch work published in international conferences and journals as

well as details of patents filed nationally and internationally during thepast five years in the subject area.

100

c. Details of existing/proposed national and internationalcollaborations/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.

175

d. R&D Plans under Program umbrella with 3-5 initial projects clearlyidentified (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 tospeech conversion software for Urdu language or one of the regional

languages).

175

e. Program implementation plans including plans for making the Programsustainable after the first three years.

175

Total Marks 700

Minimum qualification score (65%) 455

2.6

Financial ProposalsInstitutions 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.


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3 TERMS OF REFERENCE3.1 RationaleInformation 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 ProgramThe Program will aim to achieve the following objectives:

Create standards, linguistics resources, technologies and applications in local languages forassisting and promoting effective and widespread use of ICTs across Pakistan


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Proliferate the technologies and applications developed for creating and using locallanguage content for the socio-economic development of Pakistani citizens and

communities

Explore avenues for capacity building for and commercialization of such technologies, thuscontributing to developing a vibrant industry around local language computing and content

3.3 Proposed Functionsa. 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 OutputVarious types of Program activities and the associated output targets are as follows:

Table 2: Program Output

Proposed Activities Expected Output Suggested Targets

Trainings Trained human resources Core groups of 30-40researchers/professionals will be

trained over a span of three years.

Additional 200-400

researchers/professionals would be

trained through short courses,

workshops and seminars.

Research Research publications Patents 6-8 conference publications and 4-6journal publications per year would

be published. Additionally a few

patents would also be filed.


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Development Commercialization ofresearch

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.

Support to local industry and

society

Localization Development of value added

products and services

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 internationalconferences

Workshops and seminarsTo conduct at least one conference

and 2-3 workshops and seminars per

year.

Collaborations International collaborationsleading to joint R&D

activities

Academia-industrycollaborations

Participations in StandardsMeetings

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.

3.5 Proposed Operational FrameworkA 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 ModelThe 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.


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Figure 1: Proposed Program Management Structure

3.5.2 Proposed Management StructureThe 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.

Steering Committee

ProjectDirector

ProgramManagers

Projects

SatelliteFacility

ProgramManager

Projects

SatelliteFacility

ProgramManager

Projects

OperationsManager

Core SupportStaff

Technical AdvisoryCommitee


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3.6 Proposed Program FundingThe 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&Db. Testing and industry supportc. HRDd. Industry Participation/Events and Collaborationse. Set-up and Operations

Please note that a budget/financial proposal is not required at this stage.

END OF RFP

rfp draft hlt rfp dated 06 march 2012

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