National Informatics Centre

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National Informatics Centre

• A Government of India organization
• Promoting usage of IT in India since 1975
• Engaged in consultancy, network services
  including video-conferencing, software
  development and implementation support
• Has presence across the country
• Addresses computing communication needs of all
  layers of Indian Administrative set up

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NIC - Efforts in Rural Informatics

• Has been providing a number of state-of-the-art
  software solutions to address the needs of the
  government and citizens in Rural Development
  Domain
• Supported WARANA project in Kolhapur District of
  Maharashtra (Village Level)
• Implementing Community Information Centre (CIC)
  project in North Eastern States of India (Block
  Level)

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Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest
man whom you have seen and ask yourself, if the
steps you contemplate are going to be of any use
to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it
restore to him control over his own life and
destiny?
Mahatma Gandhi
Welcome to
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eNRICH
putting ICTs into the hands of the poor
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Challenges in the emerging networked knowledge
society
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Problems in Web Site development

• Time consuming.
• Need special skills to modify, revise and upload
  information.
• Solutions are more information retrieval oriented
  and less effective in providing facilities for
  community communication.

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Unfulfilled Community needs

• Information categorization in the net may not be
  relevant.
• Information content in local language is lacking
• Illiteracy is a major barrier
• Provisions for active community participation are
  lacking
• Communication needs within and between
  communities are not met.
• Research data on access habits is not available

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Difficulties in Information Search

• Time consuming
• Surfing is costly by access time
• Searching skills are necessary
• Relevancy and authenticity cannot be judged
  immediately

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UNESCOs Strategy

• To produce a generic browser for usage by
  Community Multimedia Centers (CMCs) that
• Is a one stop access delivery mechanism for
  communities
• Is customizable by individual CMCs in terms of
  local language and content
• Encourages local content production through
  active community participation
• Allows easy access to relevant and authenticated
  information
• Enables efficient communication within and among
  CMCs

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eNRICH a joint effort by UNESCO NIC

• Reaching out to the unreached through
• Customizable multilingual interface to suit
  specific local needs
• Easy to organize information resources and
  services
• Electronic community bulletin boards and
  community opinion polls
• Local content and messages posted by community
  using text, audio and video
• Quick links to email, chat and messaging services
• Learn useful and marketable skills using
  interactive multi-media content
• Built-in research to analyze community needs and
  prefernces

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eNRICH

• Consists of two main components
• Community Browser the portal interface that
  will be used by the community members
• Desk Manager a site administration and analysis
  tool for site Manager and researchers

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The Guiding Star

• eNRICH is delivered with a pre-built information
  categorization that has been arrived at after an
  exhaustive study of the information needs of the
  underprivileged sections of the society
• eNRICH also comes packaged with URLs that have
  been identified as relevant authentic vis-à-vis
  the identified information needs

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Thank You
National Informatics Centre Department of
Information Technology Ministry of Communications
Information Technology Government of India