OpenAI Partners With Karmayogi Bharat to Train Indian Civil Servants in AI
Eight OpenAI Academy courses are available on the government's iGOT Karmayogi platform, with more than 60,000 course completions reported so far.
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OpenAI has partnered with Karmayogi Bharat to provide artificial intelligence training to government employees across India, with eight courses already available on the Centre’s iGOT Karmayogi learning platform.
Pragya Misra, OpenAI’s Head of Strategy and Global Affairs in India, announced the partnership on LinkedIn, saying the courses have recorded more than 60,000 completions.
The most popular course so far is “Get Started with ChatGPT Work,” which focuses on using AI for everyday tasks and workflows.
“The goal is to help officials use AI confidently and responsibly to improve internal productivity, streamline routine work and deliver better services to citizens,” Mishra wrote.
Under a memorandum of understanding (MoU), eligible government employees registered on iGOT Karmayogi will have access to educational resources from OpenAI Academy.
The academy offers courses covering AI fundamentals, prompting, workplace applications and AI-assisted workflows. Its broader training program also includes responsible AI use and reviewing AI-generated outputs.
Karmayogi Bharat is a government-owned, not-for-profit entity established under the Department of Personnel and Training to support capacity building among public servants.
According to Mishra, more than 17 million government employees are registered on iGOT Karmayogi, giving the partnership a potentially large audience.
The reported 60,000 course completions, however, do not establish how many individual employees have undergone training or whether they are applying those skills in government offices.
The partnership has also drawn questions about data protection and the responsible use of AI in public administration.
Sudarson Roy Pratihar, an AI Advisory Board member at EC-Council, urged both organisations to ensure that the training covers AI safety, security, governance and compliance.
“Dear OpenAI and Karmayogi Bharat: Hope you have carefully crafted the courses to teach #AISafety, #AISecurity, #AIGovernance and compliance laws,” he wrote on LinkedIn.
Pratihar warned that a focus on the number of people completing courses could come at the expense of responsible deployment if officials are not adequately trained to protect personally identifiable information (PII) and other sensitive data. He also raised concerns about potential bias arising from over-reliance on AI-generated decisions.
Maitree Shandilya, chief of staff to the CEO at Vedantu, wrote,
“Awesome initiative! One thing I have observed – Govt docs and communication are generally non-digital. How are we tackling this?” Shandilya wrote.
The question highlights a potential hurdle in translating AI training into everyday administrative use, particularly in workflows that still rely on paper-based documents or records that are not readily accessible in digital formats.
Neither organization has disclosed the financial terms of the agreement or provided a timeline for the wider rollout of OpenAI Academy courses on the platform.
