India Among 100 Countries In The United Nations E-Government Development Index (EGDI)
For The First Time, India Earns A Place Among The Top 100 Countries In The United Nations E-Government Development Index (EGDI)
The theme of the 2018 edition of the index was “Gearing E-Government to Support Transformation towards sustainable and resilient societies’’.
What is EGDI?
The E-Government Development Index (EGDI) is a survey conducted annually and whose reports are published every two years by the United Nations Public Administration Programme (UNPAP), since its launch in 2003. Involving all the 193 UN member states, the EGDI aims to analyse the capacity and willingness of a nation to utilise e-governance as a vital tool for development.
The 2018 ranking provides a clearer insight into the fact that the ongoing wave of digital revolution across India has benefited the citizens and may pave the way for further ICT (Information and Communications Technology) advancements in the public sector. The Government has come a long way from the experimental launch of e-seva kendras a few years ago as the stepping stone of e-governance. However, it is not possible to make a concrete claim unless all the constituent factors of the index are understood clearly.
How Was India Ranked?
To break it down, the E-Government Development Index is calculated taking into account the weighted average of three indices, which cover the primary dimensions of e-governance, namely:
Telecommunications Infrastructure Index (TII): The TII is measured per 100 persons of the national population with indicators like the number of internet users, personal computers, mobile subscribers etc. India has a notably poor performance in TII with a meagre score of 0.20091.
Human Capital Index (HCI): Considering the factors of adult literacy rate and enrolment ratio in schools, UNESCO prepares the Human Capital Index. Interestingly, India fared at quite a low 103rd rank among 122 economies in the 2017 HCI report.
Hence it is evident that OSI has played the central role in placing India within the top 100 of the EGDI.
What Does This Mean For The Indians?
In October 2017, AfrAsia Bank Global Wealth Migration Review adjudged India as the sixth wealthiest nation in the world. Now the positive leap in the EGDI rankings shows that there is a clear correlation between the national economy and e-governance, indicating the huge need for e-governance in all aspects of administration. The GST rollout saw the introduction of online tax payment which otherwise would be taking days to be filed and recorded. However, one of the key instruments of Digital India, the Aadhar Card, has failed to garner the trust of the public due to endless controversies surrounding personal information leakage. Also, some discernible hacks in the Defence and Supreme Court websites in the past few months have created a sense of fear about digitisation. Also, digital education must be encouraged on a widespread scale before more digital initiatives are launched. Thus, the Modi government needs to foolproof its digital facilities to actually effect technological development, not just use this rank as a campaign tool for 2019 elections.
It should be noted here that India has performed exceedingly well in the E-Participation Sub-Index gaining the 15th Rank with a score of 0.955. This index denotes the participatory response of the citizens to the available e-governance facilities. It is aimed to assess civic engagement and ensure transparent governance.
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Why we need to do better on e-governance
Collateral benefits
Some time later, they noticed a few interesting things happening. Some enterprising individuals had started offering a whole host of ‘services’, using this free Internet access, to other, more technologically challenged, neighbours for a small fee. From downloading, printing and selling application forms for various government services such as ration card and water connection to downloading movies to CDs, they had managed innovative ways to use the Internet and profit from it. Some of these ‘services’ were not exactly what the proponents of the experiment had in mind when they started. They found, for instance, that one of the most sought-after ‘services’ was providing access to porn sites/ clips. Nevertheless, the bulk provided genuine and clearly needed services to people who otherwise had to depend on agents and touts for securing access to basic services that they were, at least on paper, legally entitled to.
In fact, such learnings eventually prodded the government to reluctantly push forward with not just e-governance initiatives, but deliver access to e-governance through measures like the ‘e-seva kendras’ which facilitate e-form submissions, e-filings and e-payments for government services.
Unfortunately, while there is much talk of pushing the cause of e-governance in India, actual progress has been slow. True, the so-called G2C (government to citizen) stack is now well-advanced. You can access most government service providers electronically to get bills and make payments. With the introduction of the GST network, you can now pay almost all your taxes electronically, file returns, claim refunds, and so on.
However, in other areas like public health and land records, the progress has stopped with putting up some downloadable forms online. Many government departments still insist on physical forms and signatures, despite the near universalisation of an identity instrument like Aadhaar, which allows simple and foolproof authentication.
This is probably why India continues to rank a relatively low 96 in the United Nation’s E-Government Development Index, whose 2018 rankings were released last week. That is probably because there is little to write home about, despite the astonishing pace of digitisation in India.
The UN E-Government Development Survey is the only global initiative to measure and track how governments are faring on the e-governance front. According to the UN website, the report “looks at how e-government can facilitate integrated policies and services across the three dimensions of sustainable development”. With an EGDI index score of 0.5669, India is just above the world average of 0.55. The Asian leader in e-government, South Korea, scored 0.9010 (marginally behind world leader Denmark’s 0.9150). India’s score is also shy of Iran (0.6083). Even in the SAARC region, Sri Lanka is ahead of India.
However, India does rank very high in one sub-index. It moved up 12 places in the E-Participation Index, from 27 in 2016 to 15 in 2018. While not as general as the EGDI, the EPI looks at issues like e-information, e-consultation and e-decision making to arrive at a score. India’s high ranking does signify two things: that the government is making more information available online and that more people are in a position to access that information, and also electronically participate in policy formation and decision-making. A good example of this was when the government first mooted its ‘smart cities’ initiative, when citizens were able to actively participate with ideas on what kind of initiatives their city should adopt and how these initiatives should be designed and implemented.
Unfortunately, that form of crowd-sourced public planning appears to have been just a flash in the pan. The reason the UN compiles this index and urges member countries to focus on e-government initiatives is that there is a clear link between greater e-governance and easier public access to government services and a reduction in poverty and inequality. One of the biggest reasons our poverty alleviation measures have failed to achieve the desired impact (apart from corruption and leakage) is inefficient targeting, and lack of information with the intended beneficiaries about plans and schemes meant to assist them.
Access is crucial
Knowledge is power, but access to knowledge is another kind of power. This is where digital can be a great disruptor. With the India Stack (Aadhaar, UPI, etc. aimed at ensuring presence-less, cashless and paperless service delivery), and the ongoing mobile and broadband revolution, India can become a world leader in e-governance. But it may have to learn some lessons from Iran and South Korea first.