D.Net’s Jeeon-IKB ( Information and Knowledge Base) received Manthan South Asia Award 2008. It is to be mentioned that other five initiatives from Bangladesh also received award this time. This is an award for promoting digital content for development under the aegis of World Summit Award announced during World Summit on Information society during 2003 and 2005. D.Net’s content development team is happy that its knowledge management efforts received first recognition outside the geographical boundary. The Jeeon-IKB is being used now in more than 200 telecentres in the country.
Jeeon-IKB is the largest Bangla language digital content base on livelihood issues. The development of Jeeon-IKB started in 2003 with a need assessment research funded by Research Initiatives, Bangladesh. D.Net through its research endeavours found that ICTs are relevant to poor people only if they are deployed to meet the information needs related to their daily life. Since 2003, D.Net has been developing Bangla language content primarily for the rural communities, following the ‘development informatics” approach. D.Net followed a “critical mass approach” in content development, which means an information and knowledge base should be able to meet any information and knowledge need, not only need in agriculture or health. Furthermore, receiving information is always enough, people need to know where they can receive service and at what cost. Thus, D.Net’s content development efforts extended to development of a livelihood directory titled “Jeeon-Thikana”. One of the most crucial information need is job information. The traditional job sites provide information only for so called “white collar” jobs. D.Net has developed a job portal titled “Jeebika” ( www.jeebika.com.bd ) , focusing on jobs availability at district level searchable by educational qualification, job location, preference in profession with full reference to the original source of job-posting.
Initially, Jeeon-IKB was available only in CD-ROM, as Internet-based access to content was not possible when D.Net started development of content. D.Net’s content-base is now also available online ( www.jeeon.com.bd).
From only text and picture based content, D.Net has shifted its focus on animated, audio and video-content, which improves knowledge transfer to users, illiteracy barrier is possible to overcome through this medium.
D.Net has formed a venture “Multimedia Content and Communications Ltd” ( www.mcc.com.bd), to continue content development professionally.
One of the agenda of D.Net’s content development endeavours was to promote digital content development by domain institutions. The endeavours started bearing fruit and recently IRRI in collaboration with BARC formed Bangladesh Agriculture Knowledge Network, which will be the source of audited content on agriculture. D.Net believes that other domain institutions, for examples, in health sector, will come forward to produce audited content for common people.
