After breaking into top 100 on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index under the Narendra Modi era last October, India has marked a similar success on United Nation’s E-Government Index, jumping 22 ranks in last four years and 11 ranks in last two years. India, which was ranked 118 in 2014, is now at 96th rank on the index, which maps how digital technologies and innovations are impacting the public sector and changing people’s everyday lives.

The survey, released by the United Nations every two years, noted that India has scored 100% in the first stage of the E-Participation sub-index, followed by 95.65% in the second stage and 90.91% in the third stage. The overall score of 0.9551 on the E-Participation sub-index has put India among top 15 countries in the list of 193 counties surveyed. In this category, India has emerged as sub-region leader. Denmark is the world leader, both on E-Government index and E-Participation sub-index.

Credit: United Nations

While India scores well on Online Services sub-index as well with a score of 0.9514, it ranks poorly on Telecommunication Infrastructure Index with a mere score of 0.20091. On Human Capital Index as well, India is far below the world average of 0.6627. India’s score on this index is just 0.5484, barely touching the regional index.

Nevertheless, an improvement of 22 ranks is indeed a big shot in the arm of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has been extremely vocal about digitising India. In October 2017, India’s leapfrog jump on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business also helped the country to gain significance on world platforms, as a result of which rating agency Moody’s upgraded sovereign rating Baa2 from Baa3 after a gap of 14 years.