Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah proposed a public Wi-Fi service, setting up incubation centers and several e-governance initiatives in his maiden state budget under the new Congress government. Note that BJP government had previously announced a state budget in February 2013, however it was scrapped due to a change in the government two months ago. Here are some major announcements from the Karnataka Budget 2013-14, related to Internet and digital sectors: - Public Wi-Fi: A pilot scheme will be launched to offer public Wi-Fi services on MG Road and Brigade Road. Similar pilot schemes are proposed to be launched in Hubli-Dharwad, Mangalore and Mysore. The government hasn't disclosed any specific information on whom they have partnered to offer this service or when they plan to launch this service. - UNICODE Software: Plans to complete the development of Kannada software UNICODE based on the report of the former Kannada Software Development Committee (KSDC) chairman Dr. Chidananda Gowda. This software development has been in the works for few years now. The government had setup KSDC in 2008 and the committee had apparently made around 14 recommendations and 13 suggestions, according to a The Hindu report. These include converting ASCII scheme to Unicode, developing 15 open type Kannada fonts, creating Kannada Braille software, optical character recognition software and Kannada speech recognition software among others. However, Gowda had told the publication that the government had ignored these suggestions. - PoS Machines At PDS Outlets: Biometric enabled PoS (Point of Sale) machines will be installed at public distribution systems and the food department will be computerized. Rs 20 crore…
