What if we had a space that was dedicated to the needs and challenges of civil society when it comes to data? What if we had a space where civil society organisations could get together, deliberate, and sharpen their understanding of data to build a more thoughtful data-driven discourse? What we need then, is both hard and soft infrastructure to improve data-driven discourse in civil society. We imagined Tarkam to be that space to build new possibilities with and around data as a public good, and it is with this intent that Tarkam was launched in December 2024 as a centre in the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore.
In little more than a year, Tarkam has initiated and made considerable progress in three streams of work related to improving data maturity of civil society organisations. These three streams include building a Federated Data Repository for civil society organisations to share and engage with data; a Data Story Engine that provides visual components and templates for building accessible stories with data; and a Data Maturity Assessment tool that allows organisations to evaluate the current state of how their organisation engages with data and create a custom roadmap to deepen their data maturity.
All the work streams at Tarkam are being done in a collaborative mode, and some of the key partnerships we have built include the Common Ground network, a collaborative of 80-plus civil society organisations working on India’s natural resources; Metastring Foundation, who work on biodiversity data; Tech4Good Community, a technology initiative working with non-profits; and CoRE Stack, a tech collaborative based in IIT-Delhi. We continue to forge different partnerships with academia and civil society organisations in South Asia.
In this report, we present the work done between December 2025- August 2026. We begin with a review of what has been achieved in the four streams of work, the Federated Repository, the Data Story Engine, Data Maturity Matrix, and State of Data platform followed by a note on future plans. We wish to thank everyone who has helped nurture Tarkam, and look forward to continuing our collaboration. And we look forward to hearing your ideas and thoughts.