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through the Methodology of use of Index in the form of and work-based accounting. In November 2022,this
Panchayat Development Index (PDI). e-GramSwaraj has won the GOLD AWARD of the National
Awards for e-Governance under the category “Excellence in
Regular dissemination of the development related data is
Government Process Re-engineering for Digital
crucial for the information of concerned Panchayats, other
Transformation”. The award is a recognition of exemplary work
line departments, general public and research institutions to get
insights into the sustainable development in the rural areas. The done by Team e-Governance and supported by Team NIC-
MoPR. Various stakeholders, especially Panchayati Raj
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is
Institutions which adopted e-Panchayat applications very fast,
considered as one of the pillars of growth and development.
have helped in making the e-Panchayat Mission Mode Project
Community and Panchayats Interface: successful by strengthening the Panchayati Raj System and

The advances in internet connectivity and use of mobile phone making it effective, transparent and efficient.
are the key transformative factors for community and
Panchayats interface. At Panchayats level, the relationship with
citizens and other stakeholders is increasingly mediated by e-
governance for effective public service delivery. But the
community and other stakeholders are unable to take advantage
of internet technology because of inaccessibility of data.
Presently most of Gram Panchayat data is stored in word / pdf
file or spreadsheets . When data is made publicly available in
such format it is difficult to re-use and effectively utilise this
data. Thus currently, the entire infrastructure of information The e-GramSwaraj has inbuilt functionality to put the panchayat

gathering, processing and sharing is found wanting. data in public domain as part of transparency and
e-enablement of Panchayats: accountability. Gram Panchayat data presently available in
public domain is not “open” in terms of data reusability
The Ministry of Panchayati Raj has taken various initiatives in (technologically, in terms of machine-readability and openness
use of ICT for e-governance, including e-gramswaraj, gram of formats), easily accessible (via search engines) and
Manchitra, Swamitva etc. The MoPR through e-GramSwaraj understandable (marked up with annotations and metadata).
portal has made major progress to automate the internal This can be overcome by standardization of “meta data” and
workflow processes of Panchayats and improve local
ensuring that the systems are interoperable-e.g., different line
Governance. The e-GramSwaraj portal aims to bring in better
departments can gather different information under the same
transparency in the decentralised planning, progress reporting
heading, or the same information under different headings, by
use of common formats. Therefore, the Panchayat level data
should be made available in “machine readable open
standards” so that that the data can be reprocessed, visualized,
analyzed and mashed-up with other data. Machine readability
enhances search, and is an important component of electronic
accessibility. Panchayats can take up evidence based planning,
do their own analysis, beyond what the system has designed and
provided to the GPs, placing them at the centre of data driven

governance, enabling them to take open and informed decisions.

PDI Committee Report - 2023:Open Government Data (OGD) Platform 157