Morung Express News
Dimapur | June 12
The Nagaland Official State portal, once again, has ranked highest among the North-East and Hill States in terms of providing single window access to information and service links; but faltered on digital delivery of services and provide service-related information.
This was the key outcome of National e-Governance Service Delivery Assessment (NeSDA) Report 2021, which would be officially release on June 13 by Dr Jitendra Singh, Union Minister of State (Independent Charge), Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office, Minister of State of Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Department of Atomic Energy and Department of Space.
The NeSDA 2021 report has been prepared by covering the assessment of States, Union Territories (UTs), and focus Central Ministries on their effectiveness in delivering online services to citizens and provides suggestions for governments to further enhance their e-Governance service delivery systems, informed an official release by the Union Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions (PPG&P) on Sunday.
The Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances (DARPG) constituted the NeSDA in 2019 “as part of its mandate to boost the e-government endeavours and drive digital government excellence.”
Nagaland’s category-wise performance
The designated States and UTs portals were assessed two categories and the comparative ranking was done dividing them into four groups - North-East and Hill States; UTs, and Remaining States–Group A and Remaining States– Group B.
The first category was single window access to information and service links, and included four parameters: Accessibility; Content Availability; Ease of Use, and Information Security & Privacy.
As per the PPG&P release, Nagaland portal topped the category among the 10 North-East and Hill States, followed by Meghalaya and Assam. Manipur was at the bottom, followed by Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram.
Jammu & Kashmir, which was assessed for the first time, was ranked top among the UTs, while Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry were second and third respectively.
Among the ‘Remaining States –Group A,’ Kerala had the highest rank followed by Tamil Nadu and Punjab while Gujarat, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh were at the bottom-three.
Among the Group B States, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar were top-three performers while Rajasthan was at the bottom.
Nagaland’s ranking, however, was markedly lower in the second category focusing on the digital delivery of services and service-related information with three additional parameters: End-service Delivery, Integrated Service Delivery, and Status & Request Tracking.
In the second category, the State was ranked 6th among the 10 states, with Meghalaya leading the table, followed by Tripura and Assam. Sikkim and Manipur respectively were the bottom 1 and 2.
Punjab topped the Group A states while Rajasthan and J&K were toppers of Group B and UTs respectively.
It must be noted here that Nagaland was ranked fourth in first category in NeSDA 2019, while it came first in the ‘Assessment of State Service Portals’ though the parameters were bit different.
NeSDA 2021 framework
The NeSDA 2021 framework was finalised after multiple consultative workshops with States, UTs and Central Ministries from March 2021 to May 2021 and the 2021 Portal was formally launched in June 2021 to conduct the entire assessment process online, the release said.
The data collection, synthesis and analysis processes spanned the next 12 months till May 2022. In addition to the DARPG team supported by NASSCOM and KPMG, 36 nodal officers from State and UTs and 15 nodal officers from Central Ministries came together to ensure the successful conduct of NeSDA 2021, it added.
The assessment covered 56 mandatory services for each States & UTs and 27 services for the focus Central Ministries. Altogether 1400 services across all States and UTs were assessed as compared to 872 in 2019, an increase of over 60%.
The NeSDA 2021 findings demonstrate the journey of e-Services towards citizen centricity and benchmarking governance, it observed.
An overall improvement has been seen in scores across all parameters and at all levels with Information Security & Privacy being the most improved parameter across all portals, it said.
Among the Central Ministry Portals, scores have improved for 4 portals while scores of 6 Central Ministry Services Portals improved.
Portals of 28 of the State /UT Portals showed improvement while 22 service portals of the State /UT Services portals reflected improvement.
In the NE and Hill States, Meghalaya and Nagaland are the leading State Portals with an overall compliance of more than 90% across all assessment parameters.
J&K was ranked the highest with an overall compliance of nearly 90%among the UTs while among the remaining states, Kerala, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh had a compliance of more than 85%.
Amongst all the States and UTs, Kerala had the highest overall compliance score, the release added.
Central Ministry portals
Meanwhile, out of the focused assessment of Central Ministries, the portals of Home Affairs, Rural Development, Education, and Environment, Forest & Climate Change were toppers with an overall compliance of more than 80% across all assessment parameters, the release said.
The Ministry Portal of Home Affairs had the highest overall compliance score while the Central Public Procurement Portal, Digital Police Portal, and Bhavishya Portal are the leading Ministry Services Portals with an overall compliance of more than 85% across all assessment parameter, it informed,
The report also features few portals of the Central Ministries that offer easy access to common services and create universally accessible digital resources, it said.
The DARPG intends to conduct the next edition of NeSDA in2023, it added.
