Jammu and Kashmir would soon become the first Union Territory in the country to have a district level Good Governance Index, said Minister of State in Prime Minister’s Office Jitendra Singh here on Sunday.
Singh said Centre would set up a District Good Governance Index (DGGI) in J&K and the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) would carry out this task in collaboration with the Union Territory Government.
The framework of the proposed Index has been finalized with the technical support from the Centre for Good Governance (CGG) Hyderabad, the Minister said. The Good Governance Index at the district level would enable each of the 20 districts of Jammu & Kashmir to rise to the level of some of the best administered districts of the country, with time bound disposal of office files and other matters, increased transparency, increased accountability and increased citizen participation.
He said, the next step would be to carry forward these Good Governance practices down to Tehsil and Block level in the states. The DGGI Framework has 58 Indicators drawn from different aspects of development and district administration distributed in all-encompassing 10 sectors such as Agriculture & allied sector, Commerce & Industry, Human Resource Development, Public Health, Public Infrastructure & Utilities, Economic Governance, Welfare & Development, Public Safety & Judiciary and Citizen Centric Governance.
These indicators were finalized after a series of consultations with the District officials of Government of Jammu & Kashmir, Academia, Subject Specialists, etc. Looking at the availability of authentic published data and other key principles, the set of indicators have been finalized from a larger list of 135 to 58, the Minister said.
To compute the index and rank, the Districts on their performance based on finalized 58 Indicators, an elaborate exercise of data collation followed by rigorous data sanitization was undertaken. Final index computation process using standard and tested data normalization and scoring methods is underway. This would result in coming out with Division-wise and District-wise ranks of the Districts. While there will be a comprehensive rank of Districts based on composite 10 Sectors, the DGGI will also offer a window on indicator-wise performance of the Districts.