Taking a step further in e-Governance, Chhattisgarh is using CM dashboard for effective administration. It explains how this technology is helping in the growth of this state, largely known for its dense forest cover apart from temples and waterfalls.
The Chhattisgarh Infotech Promotion Society (CHIPS) is the Information Technology nerve centre for Chhattisgarh. It is responsible for all e-Governance and IT initiatives across the state, with a view to enhance accountability, accessibility and transparency in the functioning of all state departments.
Overview and Challenges
The Chief Minister’s office was facing a challenge in accessing fact-based, concise and insightful performance data of various departments and schemes from across the state. This made timely inspection and periodic reviews difficult and time consuming for Chief Minister Dr Raman Singh and his team.
There was also a need for informationdriven mechanism to better allocate resources and provide budgetary support in the delivery of services to people.
Unlike the dashboards implemented by some other states, the focus here was on improving performance rather than on providing the citizens a window into the status of services being provided by the government to its citizens.
Support and intervention
Ernst & Young (EY), the multinational consultancy firm, was engaged by the government of Chhattisgarh for this project with the following mandate:
Function as an independent think tank for providing advisory inputs on state governance policies, cabinet ministry guidelines/notes and departments/schemes.
Help develop a CM dashboard, which captures and presents to the Chief Minister, key performance indicators (KPIs) of the state departments, schemes and districts. Performance against these KPIs is reviewed by the CM and the Secretariat to bring institutionalised and continuous improvement in the state’s governance capabilities.
The CM Dashboard has broadly three components:
- State at a glance – a single screen view to understand the state’s standing compared to the others on key social, economic, infrastructural and demographic parameters.
- Department view for depicting performance of key departments against the identified KPIs and highlighting KPIs needing attention. For each KPI, designated users can see the performance trends over time, analyse which districts need to improve and compare the performance with targets and benchmarks. This allows for objective analysis of the performance
District scorecard which monitors and tracks performance of districts against KPIs in key sectors such as healthcare, education, and agriculture. It allows comparisons between districts at an individual KPI level, ranking them on the basis of their performance in key sectors, thus creating healthy competition among the district collectors.
The dashboard, besides highlighting what is functioning well and what needs attention, allows for drill-down, spatiotemporal analysis to identify the possible causes for lagging performance. This then forms the basis for recommending specific strategies for improvement.
The on-site team of EY works with the CM’s secretariat to set time-bound improvement targets and guide the departments on strategies for achieving them. Progress against these defined goals is then monitored on a regular basis by the Chief Minister. This team also provides inputs to the CM’s secretariat on a variety of policy matters and also proactively suggests interventions and programs for inclusive growth and to make a real difference in the lives of the people.
A total of 216 KPIs are used to monitor the performance of 9 departments and 9 State Schemes in 27 districts.
The CM uses the dashboard to review the progress of all key infrastructure projects worth over `30,000 crores currently running in the state.
Result and impact
“It’s an administrative innovation that has helped in transformative decision making,” says Aman Singh, Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister, Chhattisgarh.
The dashboard has introduced a data-driven approach to governance in the state. It has brought in data consistency and uniformity across the state and it is no longer a matter of discussion whether the data is accurate or updated. Periodic performance reviews by the Chief Minister are no longer sessions where data is presented – the discussion revolves only around strategies for improving performance and achieving the targets.
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The Chief Minister uses the CM dashboard to review the progress of all key infrastructure projects worth over Rs 30,000 crores currently running in the state. The intention is to ensure that bottlenecks in project implementation are identified even before they occur so that necessary, pre-emptive corrective measures can be taken to ensure that the projects remain on track and that cost and time overruns are avoided. The dashboard thus is being used to save cost and deliver results to the people of the state.
When drought looked imminent in May 2016, the dashboard formed the basis for drawing up mitigation strategies by the state.
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Several programmes for uplift of the disadvantaged sections of society have been created by the Chhattisgarh Government using analysis of the data available through the CM dashboard.
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