Citra Social Innovation Lab, Sri Lanka’s pioneering public sector innovation hub and South Asia’s first public sector innovation lab, was founded in 2018 as a co-financed initiative between the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Government of Sri Lanka. It is anchored within the Prime Minister’s Office, which facilitates everything from influencing national policy to empowering communities.

Citra played an instrumental role in the design and conduct of UNDP’s first National Citizen Survey 2022-23 (NCS). Together with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), the data from the National Citizen Survey was then used to derive a Multidimensional Vulnerability Index (MVI) for the very first time in Sri Lanka. Additionally, this MVI report, “Understanding Multidimensional Vulnerabilities: Impact on People of Sri Lanka,” is among the first in the world to consider climate change and disaster preparedness as a key dimension.

Through its flagship HackaDev Programme, Citra has been influencing the ecosystems of youth development, social innovation, entrepreneurship, and the digital economy, aimed at enabling Sri Lanka's youth population to acquire the necessary skills to develop innovative solutions and become entrepreneurial, in order to contribute towards Sri Lanka’s economic, social, and environmental development. These efforts have now been successfully institutionalized through a partnership with the Ministry of Sports and Youth Affairs.

Citra supported the development of a new life skills curriculum by both developing and convening expertise, while also conducting master trainer and facilitative training sessions for over 170 life skills instructors, who are currently rolling this out at 50+ NYC training centres islandwide, equipping nearly 15,000 young people from diverse backgrounds on diversity and inclusion, critical media and information literacy, and innovation and entrepreneurship.

The lab has also offered its technical support to the Presidential Secretariat and the committee with technical expertise to conduct an AI Readiness Assessment (AIRA). The AIRA is a tool developed by UNDP’s Chief Digital Office (CDO) that assesses the current AI landscape in Sri Lanka and aims to understand what the challenges and opportunities are within this space. The insights brought to light through this work have now contributed directly to the national AI strategy, which is currently being finalized following extensive consultations.