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The recent Dataquest-IDC e-Governance Survey identified Delhi, Goa, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala as the 5 Best e-governed States of 2007. The next five positions were bagged by Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Punjab.
However, last year’s champions Karnataka and Gujarat plummeted to number 9 (from No. 2) and 19 (from No 4) respectively indicating that political stability is crucial to the success of e-governance initiatives in a state.
The findings of the third Dataquest-IDC e-Gov Survey 2008 were based on a survey conducted across 20 states by CyberMedia group’s flagship publication, Dataquest in association with the top technology intelligence and research firm IDC India.
While Delhi rose from third position last year to top the list, Goa - last year’s winner - dropped a position to take the second spot. Chhattisgarh jumped up from number 14 to No. 3 to record the highest jump.
Three other states, besides Chhattisgarh, showed impressive gains in ranking as interaction with the governments became easier. Himachal Pradesh jumped up nine positions to rank 7, Punjab gained eight positions to be at number 10 and Rajasthan moved up eight notches to end at number 11.
The worst e-governed state of 2007 was Jharkhand followed by Gujarat and Haryana. Gujarat had the most drastic fall ending at number 19 from number 4 last year. The overall e-governance scores of Karnataka, Uttarakhand and Haryana also fell as compared to last year as citizens and businesses reported low satisfaction levels with government services.
Citizen’s Voted Delhi the Best
Delhi-ites were the most satisfied with e-governance initiatives highlighted by the fact that Delhi topped nine of the fourteen parameters in this category. Himachal Pradesh ranked second followed by Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra.
According to the survey, the worst performing states in citizen user satisfaction were Jharkhand and Uttarakhand followed by West Bengal, Gujarat and Punjab. While Gujarat was the worst performing in five parameters of citizen satisfaction, its income tax department and power utilities was the best among the 20 states which participated in the survey.
Commenting on the survey, Dataquest’s chief editor Mr. Prasanto K. Roy said,
“We’re seeing the impact of political and law and order issues on citizen’s satisfaction--whether it’s Gujarat’s massive fall, or Karnataka’s or West Bengal’s more muted slides.”
Citizens gave maximum marks to the e-governance initiatives in education, income tax, and transport services while they were the most dissatisfied with those in employment exchange, police and security, and judiciary.
The maximum score that a state achieved in any parameter was Chhattisgarh for its education department. Delhi topped the list in police and security category while Gujarat’s low scores on both police and judiciary prove it might still be carrying the negative legacy of the 2002 riots, the Dataquest-IDC survey reveals.
India Inc Votes Tamil Nadu as the Best e-Governed State
In the overall satisfaction levels for e-governance services for businesses, Tamil Nadu topped the list with Chhattisgarh close behind followed by Delhi, Maharashtra and Kerala. Interestingly, Tamil Nadu was at number 10 in 2006 while businesses ranked Chhattisgarh at number 16.
The Dataquest-IDC survey shows that businesses in almost three-fourths of the respondent states are more satisfied than citizens with the e-governance projects. This could be because businesses reaped benefits of applications like supplies and provisions, government tenders and contracts and power utility.
Mr. Prasanto K Roy added,
“Businesses are happier with the government interface than are citizens. The prime reason is consistency, replication, and national reach of projects that affect that government-business interface--from the MCA-21 project, to tax and other corporate filings.”
Karnataka which was the topper last year fell to number 11 and Gujarat slipped to number 16 from last year’s number 3. In fact, the first 5 players in 2007 were not to be seen in the top five states list of 2006.
Chhattisgarh is the best in seven out of seventeen services like supplies provisions, government tenders and contracts, sales tax/service tax and commercial tax, power utility and water utility.
Assam sprang a surprise with the highest score in the passport services category for businesses while Delhi scored full marks in the judiciary services.
The bottom five states (based on overall business satisfaction were) were Uttarakhand (No 20), Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Gujarat (No. 16).
Gujarat’s Income Tax Department which had the highest score in citizens’ category scored a low of 50 points for business in the same parameter. Interestingly, Gujarat is the only state which had low scores in both e-governance services for citizens and businesses.
Jharkhand scored lowest in parameters like state transport services and employment exchange. The survey points out that states find it difficult to satisfy both citizens and businesses at the same time. So, Himachal Pradesh at #2 on the citizen charts dropped to #14 on the business list, while business topper Tamil Nadu ranked 10th in the citizen satisfaction category.
Goa the Most E-Ready State
The survey found that Goa was the most e-ready state followed by Delhi and Uttarakhand. E-readiness measures the success of new e-governance projects in each of the 20 participating states.
Though Uttarakhand came last in business satisfaction and was at number 19 in citizen ranking it ranked third in overall e-readiness. This implies that though the state has started leveraging ICT extensively to bolster its social and educational infrastructure, the actual benefits have not permeated or are yet to impact common citizens or businesses.
The survey results show that constant and diligent effort is required to keep individuals and businesses satisfied with the progress of e-governance initiatives. High performing states in previous years haven’t necessarily stayed at the top, which shows that continuous retention of service quality and ease of interaction is the key to e-governance initiatives.
With assembly elections due in some states followed by general elections in 2009 across the country, a high chance of disruption of e-governance services in states cannot be ruled out.
Notes to Editors:
In Delhi there is one computer for every 5 citizens (compared to a national average of one computer for every 50 citizens). Delhi also enjoys the highest per capita number of phones (88 for every 100 citizens) and internet subscribers (84 for 100 citizens) in the country.
Delhi spent Rs.10,982 for every citizen on building its IT infrastructure and maintaining citizen centric IT applications, which is nearly 100 times the per capita IT spend in Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh and nearly 300 times of the per capita IT spend in Orissa.
The PC penetration in Jharkhand and Assam is one the lowest in the country with 0.4 and 0.9 PCs for every 1000 citizens. Chattisgarh and Jharkhand have a teledensity of 3 and 3.4 phones per 100 citizens compared Delhi’s teledensity of 88. In terms of Internet penetration the top 3 states are Delhi, Goa and Maharashtra with 84, 28 and 20 Internet connections for every 1000 citizens. The States with the lowest Internet Connections are Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Assam with 0.9, 1.2 and 1.4 connections respectively for every 1000 citizens.
Methodology covers IT officials, Citizen and Business Users
The Phase 1 of the two phase study involved a detailed survey of IT Secretaries and Heads of nodal agencies responsible for IT implementation of the 20 short listed states and IDC’s secondary data. The focus was on availability of ICT infrastructure, rollout of e-governance projects and evaluation of impact of these projects in the delivery of government services to citizens and businesses.
The Phase 2 of the study involved interviews with 3012 citizen users and business users in 20 states. The scores obtained from this survey were allocated a weight of 75% in the overall assessment and ranking of the states.
The citizen users were asked to rank 14 services that ranged from Transport & RTO to Police & Security; Health & Education to Passport and Employment exchange services; Power and Water Utility to Judiciary and State Transport.
The business users were asked to rank 17 services that ranged from Business Registration to Land and Property, Licenses and Permits to Government Tenders and Contracts: Taxes (Income, Sales, Service, Commercial) to Supplies and Provisions.
The overall ranking was calculated taking into account citizen satisfaction, business satisfaction and e-readiness of the states.
About Cybermedia
CyberMedia, now in its 25th year, is South Asia's first and largest specialty media house, with fifteen publications (including Dataquest, PCQuest, Voice&Data, BioSpectrum, Living Digital, Global Services and DARE) in the infotech, telecom, consumer electronics, biotech and entrepreneurship areas, and is a media value chain including Internet (www.ciol.com), events and television. The group's media services include market research (IDC India), job board (CyberMedia tech jobs portal), content management, multimedia, and media education.
CyberMedia also publishes BioSpectrum Asia from Singapore and Global Services from the U.S.A., the first Indian magazine titles to be published from outside the country for a global audience.
For more information, please contact:
At Strategic Communications and PR
Sanjiv Kataria
+ 91 98100 48095 mob
+ 91 98100 48091 sms
sanjiv.kataria@gmail.com
At CyberMedia:
Shyamanuja Das
Editor, Dataquest,
Cyber House, B-35, Sec 32,
Gurgaon 122001 India
Ph: +91 124 4031234 +91 98102 97587
shyamanujad@cybermedia.co.in
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