On 7 May, 2010, the Cabinet Secretariat and the Information, Communication Technology and Post Authority (ICTPA) sponsored a workshop on Unicode Standards Implementation with support from the EPRC project. Forty-seven IT administrators and professionals from various ministries and agencies attended the workshop, held at the USAID Training and Resource Center. Presenters included representatives of the ICTPA, the Mongolian Agency for Standardization and Metrology, the Mongolian Software Developers Association (MOSA), and Engineer Soft LLC.
In February 2010, the GoM passed Resolution #44 mandating the use of the localized version of the ISO Unicode Standard for all official GoM documents. The Unicode Standard governs the way a computer handles characters from many different languages to ensure the proper display of information in various operating systems and applications. As one of the most important International Standards Organization (ISO) standards, the Unicode Standard supports the majority of languages and corresponding alphabets worldwide. GoM organizations have been using the now obsolete ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) standard for Mongolian fonts in all computer applications and databases. As ASCII did not include the Mongolian language, a modified Russian alphabet had to be used, causing problems with management of government documents in digital format.
The Unicode Standard Implementation workshop covered the following topics:
In February 2010, the GoM passed Resolution #44 mandating the use of the localized version of the ISO Unicode Standard for all official GoM documents. The Unicode Standard governs the way a computer handles characters from many different languages to ensure the proper display of information in various operating systems and applications. As one of the most important International Standards Organization (ISO) standards, the Unicode Standard supports the majority of languages and corresponding alphabets worldwide. GoM organizations have been using the now obsolete ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) standard for Mongolian fonts in all computer applications and databases. As ASCII did not include the Mongolian language, a modified Russian alphabet had to be used, causing problems with management of government documents in digital format. The Unicode Standard Implementation workshop covered the following topics:
- Challenges of converting existing government documents and databases into the new standard
- Review of the existing tools to convert popular word processing documents and spreadsheets
- Need for dedicated expertise for large database management systems to ensure loss-free conversions
- Subjects of Unicode support within popular operating systems, office applications and website content management system in order to start producing documents in accordance with the new standard while carefully converting old documents