Delhi, Kerala, Goa, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh top e-Readiness rankings

GURGAON, INDIA: The Dataquest-CyberMedia Research e-Readiness Assessment of Indian States 2013 revealed that Delhi, Kerala, Goa, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh had topped the rankings in the overall planning, implementation and outcomes generated from their IT policy initiatives, administrative reforms and roll-out of e-Governance programmes.

Key lessons

Ibrahim Ahmad, Group Editor, Dataquest, said: "Close to 66 percent of India's population is currently under the age of 35 years. This means that the aspirations and wants of the current generation of Indians are very different from those of their parents' or grand parents' generations. The advent and widespread adoption of Information Technology, particularly the Internet and mobile telephony have added a completely new dimension to the awareness and expectation levels of Indians from all walks of life."

Thomas George, senior VP and SBU Head, CyberMedia Research, opined: "Rising expectations and wants of citizens are forcing Central and state governments to devise schemes and programmes that can speedily and efficiently deliver the benefits of good governance to a large proportion of the population in a transparent manner. In this scenario, ICT comes as a ‘boon' by enabling reliable, secure and affordable access to welfare projects for citizens living in remote corners of the country."

"Good governance is measured in terms of access to quality education, affordable housing, modern healthcare services, employment opportunities, robust public infrastructure, ‘on-screen' delivery of government services and timely updates about welfare and financial inclusion schemes", said Vishaal Bhatnagar, lead analyst, CMR Public Sector Practice.

"Starting with the National e-Governance Plan, the Central and state governments have rapidly put in place core IT infrastructure such as SWANs, SDCs and CSCs. The focus has now shifted to providing easy, safe and affordable access to public welfare programmes through the deployment of robust ‘middleware' gateways such as NSDG, SSDG, MSDG and ‘front-end' delivery channels like Mee-Seva, e-Suvidha or Lok Mitra Kendras, state and national portals, and software tools to monitor the performance of CSCs and other service delivery channels."