Secretary, DARPG launches the third edition of the National e-Governance Service Delivery Assessment (NeSDA) portal

Source: The post is based on the article “Secretary, DARPG launches the third edition of the National e-Governance Service Delivery Assessment (NeSDA) portal” published in PIB on 6th July 2023

What is the News?

The Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances (DAPRG) Secretary has launched the third edition of the National e-Governance Service Delivery Assessment (NeSDA).

What is National e-Governance Service Delivery Assessment (NeSDA)?

The NeSDA framework was launched in 2018 by the Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances (DAPRG).

Objective: To measure the depth and effectiveness of existing e-Governance service delivery mechanisms from the citizen’s perspective.

The framework is based on the Online Service Index (OSI) of UNDESA eGovernment Survey. It has been customized for the Indian federal structure and the e-Governance landscape of the States and UTs.

DARPG undertakes NeSDA study biennially. It has successfully released 2 editions of NeSDA study: NeSDA 2019 was released in 2020 and second edition – NeSDA 2021 was released in 2022.

NeSDA 2023 Framework: The framework for NeSDA 2023 study has been elaborated under the following three dimensions: 

Portals Coverage: All Government Portals assessed during NeSDA are classified into two categories viz., (i) State, UT, Central Ministry Portal and (ii) State, UT, Central Ministry Services Portals.

– NeSDA 2023 framework proposes to evaluate the maturity of e-Government at the City level as well by assessing City Portal i.e., the official portal of respective City/Urban Local Body that provides a single window access to the information and links to the services being provided for the citizens and other stakeholders in the city.

– For City portal assessment, States/UTs may propose one of the 3 most populous cities.

Focus Sectors and Mandatory Services Coverage: The NeSDA framework covers G2C and G2B services across seven sectors: Finance, Labour Employment, Education, Local Governance Utility Services, Social Welfare (including Health, Agriculture, Home Security), Environment (including Fire) and Tourism sectors. 

– The framework for NeSDA 2023 proposes an expansion on focus sectors with an addition of Transport and Public Grievance.

Assessment Parameters: To make the NeSDA framework more robust and align with global digital government trends it is proposed to include three additional assessment parameters namely: Open Government Data (OGD), E-Participation and Leveraging Emerging Technologies.