New York: Despite its massive spend on IT and a major push for e-Governance in the country, India suffered a major jolt in the overall world e-Government Readiness Index 2008 prepared by the United Nations—down 26 notches to 113th, from #87 position in 2005.

In the web measurement assessment index too, India ranks 54, much below China (47), Singapore (25) and the US (3). The assessment looks at how governments are providing e-Government policies, applications, and tools to meet the growing needs of their citizens for more e-information, e-services and e-tools.

It also measures the online presence of national websites, along with those of the ministries of health, education, welfare, labour and finance of each UN Member State.

Interestingly, Viet Nam has gained 14 spots in the index from the country's position in 2005, climbing to #91 position, while Singapore and Thailand each fell 16 spots from their 2005 ranking, occupying #23 and #62, respectively, in the survey. 

The 2008 UN E-Government Readiness Survey, released on Saturday, is the fourth edition of the index, and assesses 192 UN member states on their application of information and communication technologies to serve and interact with citizens.

The survey showed that Viet Nam also performed well in the e-participation index, leaping to #16 position, from #63 in 2005.

Meanwhile, with an index score of 0.447, the Asian region fared slightly below the world average of 0.4514 in the e-government readiness index.

Ranked in #6 position, the Republic of Korea is the only Asian country in the top 10 list. It also fared well in the area of e-participation, described as the involvement of citizens in government programmes and services, where it was ranked second worldwide, after the United States.

After nearly two decades of growing Internet connectivity and e-Government there can be little doubt of a persistent digital divide, besides a researcher pointed out that in India only 0.4 per cent of citizens use the Internet as compared to the global average of 6.7 per cent, while in the US 54.3 per cent use it.

According to the infrastructure data presented by the UN survey, out of 100 users 5.44 are Internet users, 1.54 are having PCs, 14.83 are cellular subscribers, 3.64 are having main telephone lines, and the last but not the least 0.21 are broadband subscribers.

As per the indication of the education index in the study, adult literacy rate in India has been showed as 61 per cent and the gross enrolment recorded 63.8 per cent, which is much higher than its neighbouring countries such as Bangladesh (47.5, 58), Bhutan (47, 52), Pakistan (50, 40) and Nepal (48, 58).

According to the UN e-participating rankings in the survey, India ranks 49 with a participating index of 0.25.

The Indian government has developed a comprehensive national portal that promotes and highlights e-Governance as an important national policy and strategy, including a visible link to the National e-Governance Plan (NEGP), which details the government's e-strategy and primary contacts.

The government has created a user friendly national site that enables users to quickly access information and e-government services based on their own profile and needs, the UN observed in its e-Gov survey 2008.

Information is clearly organised according to the prospective user, including citizen, business and government, features lead users to tenders, forms and maps. The site also has a section for the large Indian expatriate community.

The site manages to balance a huge amount of information and services with intuitive navigation and access to commonly used information from a single page, according to UN observation.
—iGovernment Bureau