eSankhyiki

eSankhyiki presents a real-world case study of how data visualization functions at scale inside a national official statistical system to support evidence-based decision-making, transparency, and broad public use. The talk focuses on the design, development, and deployment of the eSankhyiki Portal, the NSO India’s unified digital platform that brings together more than 700 datasets and 136 million records from MoSPI other data-producing Ministries and Departments of the Government of India into a single, accessible interface. The central idea of the talk is that visualization is not merely a presentation layer but a core part of the data lifecycle, from discovery and validation to interpretation and policy action. Through eSankhyiki, visualization becomes embedded within everyday workflows for policymakers, researchers, journalists, and citizens. The talk will demonstrate how thematic dashboards, interactive charts, filtering tools, and metadata-driven interfaces help users move from broad questions to specific insights while working with complex socio-economic data. This topic matters deeply to me because of my long engagement with modernizing official statistics and making them more usable for diverse audiences. In public sector environments, visualization must operate under constraints of scale, data sensitivity, standards, and long-term sustainability. Building eSankhyiki required balancing technical robustness with clarity, accessibility, and trust which are the values that are fundamental to responsible data visualization. The talk connects directly to ongoing conversations in the data visualization community around usability, accessibility, ethical representation, and visualization for public good. I will discuss how design choices were informed by user research, accessibility considerations, and the need for transparency through clear metadata and explanatory notes. I will also touch on the role of AI-enabled semantic search and how it complements visualization by improving data discovery. The presentation will follow a clear narrative flow, beginning with the scale and complexity of India’s official statistics and the need for a unified dissemination platform, followed by a discussion of user needs and how they shaped visualization design. I will then walk through key features of eSankhyiki with concrete use cases, examine governance and regulatory constraints, and conclude with lessons learned and future directions for visualization in official statistics. The intended audience includes data visualization practitioners, civic technologists, designers, policymakers, journalists, and researchers interested in applied visualization and public-interest data systems. Participants will leave with practical strategies for building visualization systems at scale, insights into designing for trust and usability, and a clearer understanding of how visualization can meaningfully shape real-world decisions inside large institutions.