Knowledge Sharing PlatformEmpowering Communities through regional Content and Services

C. KathiresanC-DAC, Hyderabad, India

Session V : e-Content & ICT enabled Services for the future, 17th March 2015

Global Trend in ICT in past 3 decades

• INFORMATION is wealth (1986-1995)

• KNOWLEDGE is power (1996-2005)

• KNOWLEDGE SHARING is wealth & power (2006 – )

ICT facilitates Knowledge sharing effectively

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Need for e-Content in regional languages

• India: 418 languages; 22 official languages

• Population - 1.28 billion

• 302 million internet users in India (as on 31st Jan, 2015);

2nd largest in the world & growing fast

• 952 million mobile users (TRAI, report as on 31st Jan 2015)

– 193 million mobile internet users

– 64% of rural users search content in Local Languages

– 25% of urban users search content in Local Languages

Source: Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI ) & Indian Market Research Bureau (IMRB)

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India Development Gateway (InDG)

Initiative of Department of Electronics & Information Technology, MCIT, GOI & implemented by C-DAC since 2006

Key objective: Providing e-content and using ICT based applications for societal empowerment

Use the power of ICT to empower the poor and under-served community through provision of regional specific information, knowledge and services in select domains

Catalyzes the use of ICT for collaboration and knowledge sharing among development stakeholders

Conceptualized, evolved and progressing under the guidance of Professor M S Swaminathan

‘Reaching the Unreached’4

Vikaspedia Portal• www.vikaspedia.gov.in  

• Launched in February 2014

• Aimed at creating a collective knowledge repository

• Focus on social development sectors

• At present 9 Indian languages (Assamese, Hindi, Marathi,

Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu) and English; To

be made in 22 Indian languages by June 2016

• At present 6 domains (Agriculture, Health, Education,

Energy, Social Welfare and e-Governance) 5

Collaborative Content Creation

• ‘Crowdsourcing Model’ inviting community for active

contribution of content in their own language

• Any individual / volunteer can contribute content, edit /

comment on the existing content • Contributed content is validated by identified experts and

moderated by State Nodal Agency in the respective

states.

• Similar to Wikipedia, but, with more reliable and

authentic content in local languages specific to the

region 6

Information Services

• Information / Knowledge in local languages

(Success stories, technologies, best practices, Government schemes etc..)

• Multimedia products • e-Learning Courses• Value Added Services (e-Vyapar, Ask an Expert etc.)

• Mobile Apps related to key livelihood sectors

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Vikaspedia- Current status

• Hosted e-content & Services

Web pages - 14,000+

Multimedia - Audio 2330 min; Video 13,923 min; Flash 2.5 GB

• Portal utility (since its launch in Feb ’14)

9.2 million hits/month

2.12 lakh unique visitors/month

26 million page views/month

8405 content volunteers across 10 languages 18

Conclusion…

1. Search for need based regional language e-content is

increasing owing to mobile internet users

2. The key challenge for Vikaspedia is to ensure the credibility

and authenticity of content for the communities

3. Converging Vikaspedia with existing public library system in

India will ensure better reachability

4. Crowd sourcing model is effective in meeting the growing

demand for region specific information needs in India

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Thank You

Kindly visit

www.vikaspedia.gov.in

for more details20