Secretary DARPG, CS review progress of JK on NeSDA-2021

Srinagar, Feb 16: The Secretary, Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG), GoI and the Chief Secretary, J&K, Dr. Arun Kumar Mehta Wednesday co-chaired a meeting to review the development and functioning of District Good Governance Index (DGGI) portal and Dashboard for the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
The meeting was attended by Principal Secretary, General Administration Department, Manoj Kumar Dwivedi; DG IMPARD, Saurabh Bhagat; Secretary IT, Prerna Puri; Secretary, PDMD, Sushma Chauhan; CEO, JKEGA, Amit Sharma, senior officers of J&KIMPARD.
The portal has been made with an objective to monitor the progress of districts on several given indicators, identification of key areas improvement and assessment of comparative performance of districts on a real time basis.
Speaking during the meeting, the Chief Secretary said that the launch of District Good Governance Index (DGGI) for the UT of J&K was a remarkable achievement for the administration of J&K as it is a major step towards enhancing efficiency in governance and improving the Public Service Delivery on the ground. He added that to reap the benefits of DGGI for each district and improve governance and public service delivery, this portal has been formed which will make them result-oriented on services provided and also improve their public service delivery mechanism. The Chief Secretary directed the officers to host diverse information on the DGGI dashboard alongside the results of the index so that the public gets aware about the performance of their respective districts.
The Chief Secretary also directed the officers of Planning Department to utilize the services of District Statistics Evaluation Officers (DSEOs) for compiling the comparative data to be hosted on the DGGI portal. He also directed the DG, JKIMPARD to organize training for the DSEOs in consultation with the DARPG so that they get well acquainted about the objective and purpose of the DGGI portal and can compile the data of their respective districts accordingly.
Speaking on the occasion, Secretary, DARPG, V Srinivas remarked that the launch of DGGI and now formation of DGGI portal and dashboard is a huge administrative reform initiated by the government of J&K which has a lot of national significance. He added that the J&K has opened the door for further promoting competitive federalism at district level and several states are approaching DARPG for framing of DGGI in their respective states.
For the DGGI portal and dashboard, ten sectors have been identified for monitoring like agriculture and allied sector, industry and commerce (including tourism), human resource development, public health, public infrastructure & utilities, social welfare & development, financial inclusion, legal empowerment & public safety, environment and citizen centric governance. The portal and dashboard will be web based for all stakeholders with monthly data entry provision for each district.
Simultaneously, the Chief Secretary and Secretary DARPG also reviewed the progress of the Union territory on the National e-Governance Service Delivery Assessment (NeSDA)-2021.
During the meeting, Senior Technical Director, NIC, DARPG informed the meeting that the UT of J&K and improved significantly and has achieved number one rank among all the UTs in the NeSDA-2021. It was also given out that the UT Portal has higher compliance to the assessment parameters like accessibility, ‘Information Security and Privacy’, ‘Content Availability’ and ‘Ease of Use’.
The Chief Secretary complimented the officers of IT department, GAD and others for this remarkable achievement and asked them to bring more services on the digital platform so that maximum people take benefits out of this.
Dr. Mehta asked the IT department to complete end to end digitization of all services, integrate all public services on a single platform and also develop a feedback mechanism for the same in the given timeframe. The Chief Secretary further asked the officers to bring more services on the Rapid Assessment System (RAS) platform so that J&K can improve the performance on NeSDA and become number one performing UT among all States and UTs of the country.
Dr. Mehta asked the officers of the IT department to calibrate the services on the RAS platform as per the public feedback received. He also asked them to launch an awareness campaign for the public so that maximum people can register feedback regarding the services provided through the RAS platform.
Pertinently, RAS provides a platform for submitting the online applications for different services like issuance of domicile certificate, benefits under the MUMKIN scheme, commercial water connection, license for selling fertilizers, license for pesticides, license for opening nurseries and other services of public importance. The platform also has a user-friendly digital feedback mechanism that enables citizens to provide effective feedback on the services provided to them. The departments are also provided a graphical user interface (GUI) for assessing the feedback from citizens and incorporating suitable changes to further enhance efficiency in the service delivery mechanism.