While Haryana has unexpectedly raced up to the third position, West Bengal has secured the fourth position. Another surprise entry in the top six is Chhattisgarh. Kerala is learnt to be at the top of the index, followed by Goa at the second spot. At least seven of the top 10 positions on the index have been secured by states that have non-BJP governments at the helm.
NEW DELHI: Riding on the strength of their recent digitalisation initiatives, Haryana and West Bengal are set to break into the top six of the first National e-Governance Service Delivery Index Assessment (NeSDA), a survey that assesses state-wise performance on delivery of government services to businesses and citizens. While Haryana has unexpectedly raced up to the third position, West Bengal has secured the fourth position, ET has learnt. Another surprise entry in the top six is Chhattisgarh.Kerala is learnt to be at the top of the index, followed by Goa at the second spot.
At least seven of the top 10 positions on the index have been secured by states that have non-BJP governments at the helm.
NeSDA was a key initiative announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2018 to push the government machinery towards his promise of ‘minimum government, maximum governance’. It is also aimed at pushing up India’s overall performance on the global e-governance index, an important parameter to attract investment.
Report card: Telangana stands at the fifth spot while Andhra Pradesh is at the 13th position
Bihar has not been considered at all for the rankings as it failed to give adequate data for the assessment. Odisha, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are at the bottom of the list.
The Prime Minister’s home state Gujarat is in the eighth spot—similar to its performance on the Good Governance Index released in December 2019.
Telangana stands at the fifth spot on the tally, while Andhra Pradesh is way down at the 13th position.
Among the nine hill states, Himachal Pradesh is learnt to lead the tally while the list of Union Territories is topped by Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
The index, which also assesses central ministries, has given the top spot to the ministry of health & family welfare, while the second position has been secured by the ministry of human resource development (MHRD) for its SWAYAM education platform and the National Scholarship Portal. The ministries of agriculture, social justice & empowerment and rural development are among the other top five scorers.
The NeSDA framework assessed all the service portals of states, Union Territories and central ministries on seven key parameters—accessibility, content availability, ease of use, information security and privacy, endservice delivery, integrated service delivery and status & request tracking.
These cover government to business and government to citizen services across finance, labour & employment, education, local government & utilities, social welfare (including agriculture and health) and environment (including fire) sectors. India was ranked 96 among 193 countries in the United Nations E- Government Survey of 2018. While this was an improvement over the 118 rank in 2014 and the 107 position in 2016, more effort is clearly needed. The NeSDAframework is a step in that direction to nudge states and government interfaces to become more people -friendly.
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