Internet pioneer
Recognised among the founders of LEARN, Sri Lanka’s academic and research network, and involved in the country’s formative Internet community.
Internet · Language · Inclusion
Harsha
Wijayawardhana
A pioneer of the Internet and local-language computing in Sri Lanka—working to ensure that every language, script and community can participate fully online.
B.Sc. (Miami)CITP (UK)FBCS (UK)ICANN At-Large Individual Member
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A connected Sri Lanka
Building access before access was ordinary.
Harsha’s work connects the early development of Sri Lanka’s Internet with a continuing effort to make the network genuinely multilingual—from infrastructure and telecentres to standards, fonts, keyboards, domain names and email.
Local-language computing
Long-standing contributor to Sinhala Unicode technology, the SLS 1134 standard, font guidance and practical adoption of Sinhala and Tamil computing.
Universal Acceptance
Advocating systems that accept all valid domain names and email addresses, including those written in the world’s diverse scripts.
Internet governance
Founding President of the Internet Society Sri Lanka Chapter, ICANN participant, Sinhala Generation Panel Co-Chair and ICANN At-Large individual member.
International education systems · 2009–2012
Bhutan eLearning: from a university platform to sustainable teaching capacity.
Harsha’s work through UCSC and Theekshana connected the Royal University of Bhutan’s Moodle-based Virtual Learning Environment with a later programme in instructional design for university staff.
Establishing the institutional LMS
A World Bank-funded project established the VLE through which the Royal University could organise online courses, learning resources and communication.
Developing the people behind the platform
The follow-up engagement trained Royal University staff to design learning objectives, content, activities and assessments for effective online education.
A complete education system
Open the separate Bhutan eLearning project page, official records and project photographs →
Prof. V. K. Samaranayake
A formative professional association.
Harsha worked within initiatives led by the late Prof. V. K. Samaranayake across Internet infrastructure, Sinhala computing, election systems, rural connectivity and the institutional development of Sri Lanka’s ICT sector.
An Introduction to Unicode for Sinhala Characters
Co-authored with V. K. Samaranayake, S. T. Nandasara, J. B. Dissanayake and A. R. Weerasinghe.
Kothmale to Virtual Village
Prof. Samaranayake assigned Harsha to resolve Kothmale’s connectivity problem and later guided his association with Sarvodaya’s telecentre programme.
Kothmale Internet Program to Virtual Village
Harsha’s contribution to Prof. Samaranayake’s felicitation volume records nine years of ICT4D work in Sri Lanka. Read the publication record →
Rural connectivity · 1998–2007
From Kothmale to the Virtual Village.
These were not two isolated projects. They form one historical progression from community-radio-assisted Internet access to affordable wireless last-mile connectivity for rural communities.
Community access became village connectivity
Extending the network beyond a single centre
At Kothmale, Harsha led the technical team that built the WAN, LAN, 2 Mbps radio-frequency link and initial website for the pioneering community-radio and telecentre initiative. The later Virtual Village project carried the same problem forward: how could affordable wireless links reach communities beyond the connected institution?
Presented together, the projects record a continuous period of ICT4D experimentation—community mediation, rural access, Wi-Fi last-mile engineering and practical models for underserved locations.
Read the connected history and view the project photographs →Public-service broadcasting · 1997–2017
Internet Sampath Bhavithaya: bringing the Internet to Sinhala-speaking audiences.
A major, long-running public-education project that translated rapidly changing Internet and computing ideas into practical weekly radio conversations.
CINTEC · UCSC · Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation
More than nineteen years of sustained digital public education
Harsha was a principal resource person in the team behind Internet Sampath Bhavithaya, explaining websites, online services, computer security and emerging digital practices in accessible Sinhala. The programme began in 1997 and continued until 2017, preserving a distinctive chapter of Sri Lanka’s public-service broadcasting and Internet history.
The collaboration brought together Harsha, Dr. S. T. Nandasara, Prof. Kamal Waleboda, Dr. Ruvan Weerasinghe, Mr. Atthanayake and other colleagues. Its importance lies not only in its longevity, but in the patient work of building public understanding at a time when most listeners had little or no direct access to the Internet.
Later photographs record the programme in the former ICT auditorium—subsequently named the Prof. V. K. Samaranayake Auditorium and later demolished—and show its archived website projected behind the presenters.
Read the complete radio history and view the recovered photographs →Early Internet history · 15 March 2002
The first live webcast from Sri Maha Bodhi.
A pioneering webcast associated with Sarvodaya’s Peace Samadhi Day in Anuradhapura, accomplished when live Internet broadcasting in Sri Lanka was still technically difficult and exceptionally rare.
Anuradhapura · 15 March 2002
A connection made against the odds
When the SLT-supplied Cisco 2500 failed, Harsha drove to Rajarata University and obtained permission from its Vice-Chancellor to temporarily disconnect the University’s Internet connection. He configured a borrowed Cisco 805 router in about five minutes and restored the link, enabling the Sarvodaya event to be streamed live from beside Sri Maha Bodhi.
The photograph, shared by Janantha Marasinghe, shows Harsha with his research student Dihan Morawaka seated beside him and the young Janantha Marasinghe smiling on his left.
Read the webcast history and documentation →Government web development · 1996–2009
From www.lk to news.lk.
As the first webmaster of Sri Lanka’s original government portal, Harsha helped establish the country’s official presence on the Web and subsequently contributed to priu.gov.lk, formin.gov.lk, mfa.gov.lk and the development of news.lk.
President’s Office · February 2009
Launching news.lk during a national emergency
President Mahinda Rajapaksa was expected to launch the portal. Following the LTTE suicide air raid over Colombo on the night of 20 February 2009, he attended an emergency Defence Council meeting and sent Prime Minister Hon. Ratnasiri Wickremanayake to represent him.
Harsha demonstrated the portal to the Prime Minister in the presence of Mr. Anusha Palpita, senior ministers and officials. Prof. V. K. Samaranayake attended the event but is not shown in this photograph.
Read the complete government-web and personal history →National election infrastructure · 1998–2015
Building election tallying and secure media-results systems.
Harsha led election-night technology operations and the development of software and secure networks used to process and disseminate official results.
Technical leadership · Software supervision · Secure results
From election-night operations to a secure national results network
Harsha led the election-night technical team responsible for keeping systems, data flows and results dissemination operating under severe time pressure. Later election software was developed under his supervision.
From 2001 onward, Harsha led SDU teams developing the overall tallying software. He became Project Lead by 2004 and chief architect of the software that remained in use until 2015. This work continued across the tenures of Election Commissioners Dayananda Dissanayake and Mahinda Deshapriya.
He designed and developed the Election Commissioner’s high-security intranet and local network, connecting seven authorised media institutions and distributing official results in multiple data formats with multilingual presentation. He also led development of the television result screens and designed the processing database and 2004 election applications.
Read Harsha’s complete election-work record and view the photographs →ICANN work
Building a multilingual Internet.
Harsha’s ICANN work spans Internationalized Domain Names, Sinhala script Label Generation Rules, Universal Acceptance and capacity building, undertaken with international and Sri Lankan collaborators.
Sinhala Unicode · National language technology
Making Sinhala visible in the digital world.
Harsha regards solving the practical problem of Sinhala Unicode font rendering as his greatest contribution to the Sinhala language. His work connected character encoding, font design, OpenType shaping, rendering engines, national standards and public adoption.
Laboratory breakthrough · Sarasavi Unicode · fonts.lk
From encoded characters to correctly rendered Sinhala
In his laboratory, Harsha worked out how Sinhala glyphs, vowel signs, conjuncts, rakaransaya and yansaya could be controlled through OpenType substitutions and positioning rules so rendering engines produced correct Sinhala words from Unicode character sequences.
He applied and tested these principles through Sarasavi Unicode in collaboration with Winnie Hettigoda. Hettigoda designed the Sinhala Unicode logo using his newly developed Sinhala letterforms and colours drawn from the Sri Lankan national flag. The logo first appeared on the simple white-background design of fonts.lk.
Through fonts.lk, the laboratory work became public infrastructure: standards-compliant fonts, software, installation guidance and technical knowledge were placed in the hands of users and developers.
Read the complete Sinhala Unicode, logo and fonts.lk story →The rendering breakthrough
Developed and tested OpenType shaping rules using tools including Microsoft VOLT, FontLab, Fontographer and FontForge.
fonts.lk
Created a focal point for Sinhala and Tamil Unicode fonts, tools, implementation guidance and public adoption.
BMP, SMP and SLS 1134
Contributed to Sinhala standards and the digital preservation of modern Sinhala, Lith Illakkam and Sinhala Archaic Numbers.
National and international standardisation
Making standards that allowed Sinhala to work digitally.
Harsha’s contribution was not confined to using established standards. It included the research, technical negotiation, encoding proposals, implementation testing and national adoption required to make standards work for Sinhala users.
SLS 1134 and Sinhala computing
Contributed to Sri Lanka’s Sinhala character-code standard and its third revision, connecting character repertoires, keyboard input, font behaviour and practical national implementation.
Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646
Helped carry Sinhala language requirements into international character encoding, including Sinhala Lith Illakkam in the BMP and Sinhala Archaic Numbers in the SMP, while testing how encoded text rendered in real software.
Fonts, shaping and rendering
Connected the written standard to implementation by developing and testing Unicode fonts, OpenType shaping rules, rendering engines, keyboards and guidance through fonts.lk.
Romanization of geographical names
Contributed language-technology expertise to national Sinhala romanization work through the Survey Department, drawing on ISO 15919 and supporting interoperable maps, gazetteers, databases, search and navigation.
ICANN Sinhala Label Generation Rules
As Co-Chair and contributor to the Sinhala Generation Panel, helped define safe, linguistically valid Sinhala labels for the Internet’s Root Zone and multilingual domain-name ecosystem.
Standards as public infrastructure
Worked across SLSI, Unicode, ISO/IEC character-encoding forums, ICANN and national institutions so that standards became usable public infrastructure rather than documents alone.
National digital forensics · 2010–2014
Launching Sri Lanka’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System.
Harsha led the research and engineering work that transformed a major fingerprint-record backlog into an operational national capability for the Criminal Record Division of the Sri Lanka Police.
Deyata Kirula · National launch
From accumulated records to an operational national system
Beginning in 2010, Harsha directed the development of a locally researched forensic platform combining fingerprint matching, latent-print processing, examiner tools and a growing national database. The work required both software engineering and close engagement with the operational procedures of fingerprint examiners.
The system was launched in February 2014 and subsequently recognised at e-Swabhimani 2014 and the Manthan Awards 2015. Its use was expanded to 42 Police divisions, turning the research into a practical national public-safety service.
The photograph records the launch at Deyata Kirula, where Harsha presented the system in the presence of the then Defence Secretary, Hon. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who later became President of Sri Lanka.
Read the complete AFIS development and launch story →
National commissions · Buddhist public service
Buddhist Rights Commission: technology, communication and public service.
Harsha’s service through the All Ceylon Buddhist Congress brought technology, public-information and institutional experience to nationally important work concerning Buddhist rights and the preservation and communication of Buddhist knowledge.
Public duty beyond computing institutions
Applying digital expertise to nationally significant service
As a Commissioner of the Buddhist Rights Commission, Harsha wrote the technology section of the Commission report, bringing experience in public digital infrastructure, language technology, information access and institutional systems to this nationally important inquiry. The official report includes a dedicated field covering technology, scientific method, communication and new media.
As Chairman of the Technology Committee, he has supported the responsible use of technology for communication, preservation, administration and wider public access to Buddhist knowledge. This work belongs alongside his major national digital projects, rather than being hidden only within a collaboration page.
Read the Commission, technology-section and service record →Selected milestones
Technology in public service.
Across standards, digital government, research networks and governance, the focus has remained practical: building technology that people and institutions can actually use.
First webmaster of www.lk and national Y2K operations
Served as the first webmaster of Sri Lanka’s original government web portal and was in charge of the National Y2K Event Management Centre during the millennium rollover. Read the institutional record →
UGC university selection and N-HEMIS
Designed the rule engine and selection algorithms used to computerize admission to Sri Lanka’s public universities, and contributed as Theekshana CTO to N-HEMIS implementation and maintenance. Read the project record →
Buddhist Congress, rights and technology
Served as Buddhist Rights Commissioner from 2018 to 2021 and as Chairman of the All Ceylon Buddhist Congress Technology Committee from 2021, applying digital expertise to Buddhist institutional and public-service work. Read the service record →
E-Linkage in Sri Lanka
Presented Sri Lanka’s experience at the NAM Centre for South-South Technical Cooperation during its early programme to build electronic linkages among member countries. Read the surviving record →
LEARN & the early network
Recognised in 2019 as one of seven founders of LEARN at its thirtieth-anniversary celebration.
Sinhala for the digital age
Contributed to Sinhala Unicode research and the third revision of Sri Lanka Standard SLS 1134.
Sinhala on the Internet
Co-Chair of the Sinhala Generation Panel for Internationalized Domain Names and an advocate for multilingual Internet infrastructure.
A national Internet community
Founding President of the Internet Society Sri Lanka Chapter and a continuing voice for an open, inclusive Internet.
Universal Acceptance
Resource person and organizer for national UA, IDN, EAI and DNS-security programmes; individual member of ICANN At-Large.
Recovering Sinhala numeration
Led research into historical Sinhala numeral systems and the evidence for a concept of zero extending back more than two millennia.
Internet Sampath Bhavithaya
ICT resource person from the programme’s inception, working with compere Prof. Kamal Waleboda on Sinhala Internet public education for almost nineteen years.
Professional standing
Learned societies and international standards.
Memberships connecting research in the history of mathematics with professional computing, Internet governance, character encoding and multilingual standards.
Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics
CSHPM/SCHPM. Member of the Society, which accepted “Sri Lankan Brahmi Numerals as Precursor to Place-Value Notation and as a Multiplicative and Additive System” for its 2026 Ancient Mathematics special session in Halifax.
The Unicode Consortium
Individual member and contributor to Sinhala encoding, Sinhala numerals, standards implementation and digitally inclusive language technology.
BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT
Fellow of BCS (FBCS) and a Chartered IT Professional (CITP).
Internet Society, ICANN and APRALO
Founding President of Internet Society Sri Lanka; ICANN At-Large individual member and Asia Pacific Regional At-Large Organization participant.
ICANN Sinhala Generation Panel
Co-Chair and contributor to Sinhala script Label Generation Rules for the Internet’s root zone.
ISO/IEC Character Coding Working Group
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2. Sri Lankan expert contributing to ISO/IEC 10646, the Universal Coded Character Set, including work supporting the encoding of Sinhala numerals.
Institutional record
Leadership, learning and public service.
Photographs preserved from institutional archives, accompanied by their historical context rather than presented as an unidentified gallery.
Featured public lectures
Ideas presented in public.
Two important records connecting Harsha’s leadership of Sri Lanka’s Internet community with his research into the Sinhala concept of zero.
May 2011 · INET Colombo
Welcome speech as founding President of ISOC Sri Lanka
The original conference video is now playable directly from the homepage.
Speech, context and contemporary press coverage →
22 April 2023 · Sinhala online lecture
සිංහල අංකනය හා ගණිතය
Harsha’s lecture in the Institute of Archaeology and Heritage Studies series, associated with Professor Nalin de Silva’s related discussion of zero, infinity and the Pujavaliya.
Lecture details and intellectual context →Current research
Searching for zero.
From Brahmi inscriptions to linguistic evidence, Harsha’s research follows the evolution of numeral symbols and the human ideas behind them. These recent presentations extend the work published in Numeration in the Sinhala Language.
Sinhala Numerals and Mathematics in Ancient Sri Lanka
The earlier presentation on ancient Sri Lankan numeration and mathematics, now restored to the collection.
Journey through time: Searching for the Zero
A wide-ranging Sinhala presentation on the history, symbols and cultural journey of zero.
Linguistic Zero
How languages express absence—and how that idea develops into number.
Indian Brahmi Numerals
Reading the historical record of South Asian numeral forms.
Books & project publications
Research preserved in print.
Books authored or edited by Harsha Wijayawardhana, together with a major Sarvodaya/Fusion publication arising from the Virtual Village research programme.
Numerations in the Sinhala Language
ICTA publication documenting Sinhala numeral systems, inscriptions and the historical concept of zero.
Guide to Creating Sinhala and Tamil Unicode Fonts
Practical guidance arising from Harsha’s work on Sinhala OpenType shaping and rendering rules. Read the development history →
Noise at the Last Mile
A socio-anthropological and technological study of Sri Lanka’s Virtual Villages. Harsha contributed technical research and represented the University of Colombo partner team.
Partners in Progress
Includes Harsha’s article “Kothmale Internet Program to Virtual Village: Recollection of nine years of ICT4D in Sri Lanka,” beginning on page 204. Publication record →
Writing & public work
A growing digital archive.
Selected articles, talks, workshops and resources published by or documenting Harsha’s work through the Local Language Technical Help Centre and associated public platforms.
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INET Colombo 2011 welcome speech
Watch Harsha’s address as founding President of the Internet Society Sri Lanka Chapter.
→“President caused best benefits of ICT reach all”
Locally preserved publication record and historical context for the Daily FT report on INET Colombo.
→Internet Sampath Bhavithaya
Harsha’s almost nineteen-year radio collaboration with compere Prof. Kamal Waleboda.
→UCSC Digital Thorana
Conceptualized and managed by Harsha, with viridu composed by Prof. Kamal Waleboda.
→Building the Telecentre.org Academy
Harsha’s collaboration with Dr. Basheerhamad “Shaddy” Shadrach on curricula, the LMS, localization and regional training.
→Partners in Progress contribution
Harsha’s article, “Kothmale Internet Program to Virtual Village: Recollection of nine years of ICT4D in Sri Lanka.”
→Recent issues in Sinhala Unicode keyboard inputs
Current technical observations on Sinhala text input and interoperability.
→Sinhala Numeration & the Pujavaliya
A self-contained archive of Sinhala zero, Illakkam, Brahmi numerals, large numbers beyond a googol and related media.
→Linguistic Zero
Part of the continuing journey through the language and concept of zero.
→Recent work on IDNs in South and East Asian scripts
A focus on Internationalized Domain Names and the Sinhala script.
→Presentation on Indian Brahmi numerals
Tracing numeral forms through inscriptional and historical evidence.
→Brahmi and Pocket Watch explanation
A short visual explanation from the Searching for Zero series.
→Journey through time: Searching for the Zero
The principal video presentation on the historical and linguistic search.
→Sri Lanka celebrates Universal Acceptance Day
National collaboration for a multilingual and inclusive Internet.
→Universal Acceptance Day 2024 in Sri Lanka
A national gathering advancing domain-name and email interoperability.
→Curriculum development for Universal Acceptance
Bringing UA concepts into Sri Lanka’s higher-education curriculum.
→UASG Local Initiative workshops in Sri Lanka
Harsha served as a principal resource person for the two-day programme.
→Introduction to Sinhala Unicode
A practical guide to entering, storing and using Sinhala text correctly.
→Harsha Wijayawardhana article archive
Browse independently hosted copies of Harsha’s articles, presentations, workshops and public work, with original dates retained.
Professional service
Leadership across institutions.
Harsha combines technical practice, standards work, organizational leadership, research and public-interest governance.
ICT Consultant · CINEC Campus
Serving as ICT Consultant to CINEC Campus since mid-March 2026.
ICT Consultant · Office Network (Pvt) Ltd
Advising ONL during 2026 on enterprise systems, HRIS assessment, ICT and information-security policy, solution evaluation and project governance.
COO / CTO · Theekshana R&D
Leading research, engineering and national-scale digital initiatives from the University of Colombo technology ecosystem.
International ICT convenor
Brought eAsia 2009 and the September 2014 ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2 meeting to Sri Lanka.
Sinhala romanization
Contributed technical and language-technology expertise to Sri Lanka’s work on romanizing Sinhala geographical names for the Survey Department and engagement with the UNGEGN Working Group on Romanization Systems.
Standards & governance contributor
Work spanning Unicode, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2, SLSI, ICANN, ISOC, Universal Acceptance and the LK Domain Registry.