{"id":17588,"date":"2026-01-26T16:54:32","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T11:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theeducationoverview.in\/?p=17588"},"modified":"2026-01-26T16:54:32","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T11:24:32","slug":"signing-of-memorandum-of-understanding-mou-between-digital-india-bhashini-division-and-survey-of-india-for-toponymic-data-digitisation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theeducationoverview.in\/?p=17588","title":{"rendered":"Signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Digital India BHASHINI Division and Survey of India for Toponymic Data Digitisation"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Digital India BHASHINI Division and Survey of India for Toponymic Data Digitisation<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

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Posted On: 21 JAN 2026 2:30PM by PIB Delhi<\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
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The\u00a0Digital India BHASHINI Division (DIBD), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY),\u00a0signed a\u00a0Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Survey of India (SoI)\u00a0on\u00a020 January 2026\u00a0to support the\u00a0digitisation, transcription and standardisation of geographical place names (toponyms)\u00a0using\u00a0AI-based speech and language technologies. The collaboration will strengthen the creation of accurate, multilingual and standardised toponymic datasets aligned with the\u00a0National Geospatial Policy, 2022.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The\u00a0Survey of India, as the\u00a0national nodal agency for standardisation and maintenance of geographical names, undertakes large-scale\u00a0toponymic field surveys\u00a0to collect place names in local vernacular languages for integration into national mapping systems. Under this collaboration,\u00a0BHASHINI\u2019s speech-to-text and language processing capabilities will be used to convert large volumes of audio recordings of place names into structured digital text, supporting the creation of a comprehensive and validated\u00a0Toponymy Database covering more than 16 lakh locations.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The collaboration will support the development of the\u00a0National Geographical Name Information System (NGNIS)\u00a0by enabling efficient processing of field-collected audio data into\u00a0local language scripts, Devanagari, Roman and other formats, ensuring consistency across national maps, digital platforms and governance systems. The integration of\u00a0automatic speech recognition, language normalisation and validation workflows\u00a0will significantly enhance the speed, accuracy and scale of toponym data processing.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The initiative will also strengthen\u00a0audio documentation of place names, preserving correct pronunciation and local linguistic variations, while enabling systematic standardisation through alignment with the\u00a0Survey of India Toponymy Manual and Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) code of practices. This will improve the reliability of place-name datasets used across\u00a0Open Series Maps, governance platforms and public information systems.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Through this partnership, the\u00a0Digital India BHASHINI Division will contribute its speech and language AI portfolio to support data creation, annotation and validation pipelines, enabling large-scale conversion of human speech into high-quality geospatial language datasets. The collaboration reflects BHASHINI\u2019s approach of embedding\u00a0language AI across national digital public infrastructure systems\u00a0where linguistic accuracy is critical for service delivery and decision-making.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The MoU reinforces the role of\u00a0language technologies in strengthening India\u2019s geospatial ecosystem, ensuring that\u00a0place names across regions and dialects are accurately captured, preserved and standardised\u00a0for governance, disaster management, infrastructure planning and citizen services. The collaboration aligns with the\u00a0Government of India\u2019s vision of building indigenous, AI-enabled digital infrastructure rooted in Indian linguistic realities.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Digital India BHASHINI Division and Survey of India for Toponymic Data Digitisation Posted On: 21 JAN 2026 2:30PM by PIB Delhi The\u00a0Digital India BHASHINI Division (DIBD), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY),\u00a0signed a\u00a0Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Survey of India (SoI)\u00a0on\u00a020 January 2026\u00a0to support the\u00a0digitisation, transcription …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17589,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theeducationoverview.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theeducationoverview.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theeducationoverview.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theeducationoverview.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theeducationoverview.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17588"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theeducationoverview.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17590,"href":"https:\/\/theeducationoverview.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17588\/revisions\/17590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theeducationoverview.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theeducationoverview.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theeducationoverview.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theeducationoverview.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}