In the United Nations e-Government Survey published in 2018, where a 193 member countries were assessed, India was placed 96th in the e-Government Development Index. There was a significant improvement in its rank from that of 2016, where the country was placed at a rank of 107.

For a nation which takes pride in using digital technologies and innovations for providing government services to citizens as well as businesses and with many well-established service delivery mechanisms across its various States and UTs, this rank can be enhanced further.

While there has been many successful initiatives undertaken by Central Ministries and State /UT Governments to improve overall e-Government development, it was also necessary to evaluate the overall efficiency of service delivery mechanism from a citizen’s perspective. The study was formulated to bridge this gap and help cater to a common evaluation framework that is built on global standards which could measure the depth and efficiency of existing e-Governance service delivery mechanisms of the nation. Thus the National e-Governance Service Delivery Assessment (NeSDA) framework was conceptualized and launched in August 2018. The framework primarily assessed all the service portals (State/UT and Central Ministry service portals) on 7 key parameters namely Accessibility, Content Availability, Ease of Use, Information Security & Privacy, End-service Delivery, Integrated Service Delivery and Status & Request Tracking , and across six sectors namely Finance, Labour & Employment, Education, Local Government & Utilities, Social Welfare (including Agriculture & Health) and Environment (including Fire) sectors.

The State/UT portals were assessed only on Accessibility, Content availability, Ease of Use and Information Security & Privacy parameters. The State’s/UT/Central Ministries Portals’ and Service Portal’s performance across sectors were further classified based on their adherence score into Top Performers, Leaders, Aspiring Leaders and Emerging Leaders.