Today, in the knowledge age, the importance of information and communication as key enablers of economic and social prosperity has been widely recognized. A number of efforts to harness the power of ICTs for the benefit of resource hungry poor communities have been made by governments, NGOs and many international development agencies.

Many projects have been undertaken by various national and international agencies and NGOs to address the needs of the underprivileged through the use of ICTs especially the use of Internet and web site development, in such community centres.  Some of the limitations of these experiments are, lack of awareness and knowledge, literacy and lack of access of ICT in local languages. Solutions are often projects with setting of connectivity to Internet and setting of local language web sites. These often are time consuming and demands special skills, thus impacting sustainability of such projects. Such web sites are often managed by a single person, rather than with community participation.

Effective communication within and among community is a necessary ingredient for empowering the communities. However, these web sites invariably focus more on information retrieval and less on providing facilities for community communication and participation. Searching for relevant information on the Internet is time consuming, costly, requires knowledge of English language and also requires special skill set. Even when information has been gathered, its relevancy and authenticity cannot be judged immediately. This problem is further compounded by the low standard of living and low literacy of the underprivileged section of the society.

Last but not the least, research data on access habits of community members is severely lacking. Such data, if made available, can greatly enhance the effectiveness of ICTs in improving the lot of the underprivileged.

eNRICH was developed by NIC in response to the need expressed by UNESCO to address the above challenges in its cross-cutting theme project ictPR (ICT for Poverty Reduction).

eNRICH is a generic and yet easily customizable web based software solution that acts as a gateway to a community’s own world of knowledge, communication and empowerment. It enables communities to quickly and efficiently build their own gateway website, enriched with their own local content and connected to knowledge sources and services that are tailored according to their own information and communication needs.

eNRICH addresses all of the above issues in the following ways:

•   Helps rural communities in generating their own portal dynamically

•   Generates portal in the community’s own local language

•   Enables content management by  facilitating the community members to enrich the portal with their own local content and connect to knowledge sources and services that are tailored according to their information and communication needs

Block community portal

•   Improves accessibility to content through the use of multiple media

•   Facilitates knowledge management
within and among the community

eNRICH has been developed as a web-based community software solution framework that adapts to the needs and circumstances of the poor. Through its customizable, multi-lingual interface, eNRICH truly puts ICTs to work in the hands of the poor. Its multiple features not only enable communities to identify, build and organize relevant information but also promote communication between and among communities. The framework encourages collection, preservation and sharing of indigenous knowledge. With the ultimate aim of empowering communities through a collaborative approach, eNRICH acts as a platform for voicing the thoughts and feelings of the poor. eNRICH also facilitates research and analysis of its usage pattern to understand the impact of social and technological strategies in order to further innovate and align ICT solutions as a tool for poverty reduction.

Two components of eNRICH

eNRICH comprises two main components viz. Desk Manager User Interface (DMUI) and Community Browser User Interface (CBUI) which lend reusability to the entire solution framework.

DMUI, the back end interface, acts as Site Manager, Content Publisher, Content Organiser and Analyser (for researchers). The Community Browser, the front end on the other hand faithfully displays what it receives from DMUI. It also has its own autonomous spaces for community people to post content and interact among each other. This is a browser-based site administration and analysis tool for managers and researchers, which is used to:

•   Specify the knowledge resources and services to be provided to the community users on the Community Browser site

•   Interact with Community members to render the Community Browser more relevant and useful to them

•   Identify issues for opinion poll, message of the day etc

•   Moderate the contents and messages uploaded by community users so as to make them more authentic and relevant

•   Has provision for government participation in providing information and services of the government at all levels

•   Provides facility for domain experts to participate in uploading information as per community’s needs

•   Generally administer the site

Community Browser User Interface (CBUI) – also called Community Browser or CBUI, this is the interface that will be used by the community members, to:

•   Access various knowledge and services made available locally and/or on the Internet (if the site is connected to the Internet)

•   Post announcements and public messages such as local meetings, bartering, etc., in the electronic bulletin board (of the community portal or the community portal of other collaborating community portals) for other members to see and respond

•   Upload community specific content in the local database

•   Express their views on important community issues and also view other people’s opinion

•   Communicate and share information with community members both within and outside their community (Inter- and Intra- community information sharing and communication)

•   Communicate with their dear and distant ones through e-mail, chat, messaging, etc.

•   Learn through multiple media

•   Communicate their information and communication needs, suggestions, complaints etc. to the manager

Community browser user interface(CBUI)

Put together the DMUI-CBUI duo acts as a powerful framework allowing users to see the content that is most relevant & in a manner that is most suitable to them.

eNRICH  deployment  status

Already adopted

•   Information and Communication technology for Poverty reduction (ictPr) Project (http://www.ictpr.nic.in) of UNESCO, No of sites: 9 Villages

•   Community Information Centre (CICs) Project of Department of Information Technology (DIT) at 487 Block hq locations in 8 states of N-E, http://www.cic.nic.in

•   Health InterNetwork India Pilot Project (http://www.hin.org.in) of  World Health Organization (WHO) at 10 Primary/Community health centers locations in Karnataka and Orissa.

Being introduced

•   DRDA Portals for more than 550 District Rural Development Agencies (DRDA) locations across the country (http://crisp.nic.in/drdaenrich)

•   Akshaya Project (http://www.akshaya.org) of Government of Kerala in Malappuram District at more than 600 Akshaya Kiosk spread in more than 100 Village Panchayats

Road ahead

eNRICH is an ICT based tool to empower the rual poor, and to produce cost effective technologies that address the local needs and challenges of the rural masses. One important area of research is the way people interact with eNRICH.

eNRICH interface could be further enhanced by multimodal inputs and multimedia output with assisted technologies and adaptive strategies which could empower physically challenged and illiterate people.

eNRICH is currently available on Microsoft Technology and runs on both Desktop as well as Server environment. The efforts are on to port the same to Open source environment and come out with an enhanced functionality framework to establish it as a truly content management tool and portal generator.