An Empirical Framework for Digital Government Assessment

ABSTRACT

This paper describes the empirical framework that was developed and successfully implemented to monitor the assessment of progress towards Digital Governance development and transformation in the States in India. Digital India is a flagship program of the Government of India with a vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. The monitoring of progress of Digital Governance Transformation in the States in India is done at 2 levels - at the strategic level by an Apex Committee of the Government of India, and at the operational level by the respective State Level Apex Committees. Given the diversity of the States a need was felt that decision makers need near real-time, detailed critical data on key dimensions of the digital governance environment at the operational level that would help them identify priority areas for action. This paper establishes through technical literature survey that it is necessary to develop and adopt suitable frameworks and tools dedicated to measure the maturity of digital transformation in the country on near real-time basis. It then presents a structured, data-centric framework designed and implemented to provide timely data to decision-makers on the maturity of digital transformation in the country. In conclusion, the paper validates this successfully implemented framework to demonstrate that, in addition to the high level assessment carried out to assess the state of Digital Transformation carried out in the country, there is also a need for a structured framework to effectively measure and monitor the Digital Governance development and transformation on a near real-time basis

(Full paper is available at https://www.acm.org/ )