Approach and Methodology

Global Indices for Reforms and Growth (GIRG) Dashboard Approach and Methodology

Introduction: 

DMEO, NITI Aayog has been entrusted to develop the dashboard, which has three different aspects: (i) Global Index; (ii) India Index; and (iii) Reforms action. The Global Index section is meant to capture scores and ranks of countries, including India, through reports published by respective Global Publishing Agencies. The India Index section is meant to create indigenized Indices for assessment and ranking of States/ UTs based primarily on parameters monitored in GIs by Publishing Agencies. The Reform Actions section meant to identify reform actions in relation to each GI, and to further monitor progress in implementation of those identified reforms. The latter is primarily based on the pattern of framework established by DPIIT for the Ease of Doing Business Index to bring necessary changes in law/policy/rules/process etc. with specific roles and responsibilities assigned to line M/Ds and States/UTs. 

Dashboard design:

The dashboard is organized in seven modules that will incorporate the above requirements. The dashboard modules and their functionalities are briefly mentioned in the table below:

Key features of the dashboard:

The State-wise scores and ranks for the India Indices and Reforms will be calculated (separately and independently) and displayed through interactive maps, charts, and other visualization tools. High-end visualization of scores and ranks in all three dimensions, i.e., Global Index, India Index and Reforms will be provided using tools such as interactive maps, charts etc. Performance and compliance reports will be generated for tracking the outputs and usage of the dashboard. Various documents such as meetings minutes, best practices etc. can be uploaded in the dashboard and viewed by users enabling knowledge sharing.

Deep-diving into the three major aspects of the dashboard:

• India Index: Scoring and Ranking Procedure:
  • For each Index, score of a State will be calculated based on its progress data on the lowest abstraction level and the formula entered by the Nodal Ministry for the index. The formula for the index would be uniform across all states.
  • The national score for an Index will be calculated as a weighted average of scores of all states.
  • Normalized score values will also be visible on the dashboard.
    For parameters for which higher the value means better the performance:
    
    Where: x': Normalised progress data value for a State min(x): Minimum progress data value among all States x: Raw data for State under consideration T(x): Target value for the parameter For parameters for which higher the value means lower the performance:
    
    x': Normalised progress data value for a State max(x): Maximum progress data value among all States x: Raw data for State under consideration T(x): Target value for the parameter
• Global Index: Overall Global Picture
  • There will be a module in the dashboard that will capture and show the scores and ranks of Global Indices and Parameters as published by the Publishing Agency in its report. This module will not have any inbuilt scoring and ranking mechanism. It will only display the manually entered scores and ranks at Global Index/Parameter level.
  • This module is envisaged to help in understanding the overall performance of India in Global Indices and Parameters rankings and comparison of India’s performance against other countries. The module will help in benchmarking targets, India plans to achieve to improve its international ranking.
  • For this module, to ease the data entry process for the Nodal Ministry, facility to upload data through excel will be provided once the Global Index and Parameters are entered.
• Reform Actions: Additional Monitoring at State level for Reform Areas and Reform Actions (can be tracked on real time basis, as and when updated by the States)
  • To derive reforms and growth, the Reform Areas will be identified by the Nodal/Line Ministry on each Parameter. Further, for each Reform Area, there may be objective Reform Actions identified by Nodal Ministry in consultation with the Line Ministry/Department. The Reform Areas/Actions will also be mapped with each Ministry/Department/State for clarity on responsibility and tracking the progress update.
  • The progress on achievement/completion of Reform Actions will also be captured for each relevant Ministry/State, in the dashboard.
  • The above status/progress should be visible on the dashboard to facilitate reviews. This status will be tracked based on 4 categories of progress status i.e., ‘Completed’, ‘In progress’, ‘Yet to be initiated’ and ‘Overdue’. All the identified reform actions will be tracked based on this status. Additionally, each reform action may be classified as ‘High’, ‘Medium’ and ‘Low’ priority at the time of adding them so as to enable ease of tracking update on reform actions by the Line or Nodal ministry.

Scoring mechanism for Reform Actions

• The overall Score for Reforms will be calculated for a State and similarly for all States separately. The overall score will be a simple weighted average of all the reform actions. The States will be ranked on reforms based on the overall score calculated. A representation is given in Table below:
  
• The priority (Si) will be defined based on the priority of the reform actions (with ‘High’ having weight 4, ‘Medium’ having weight 2, ‘Low’ having weight 1 and if ‘Not feasible for current it’ it will have weightage 0). If the reform action is complete, the Reform Action score (RAi) will be considered as 3, in case of ‘in-progress’ it will be 1, in case of ‘yet to be initiated’ it will be 0 and in case of ‘overdue’ the value will be -1. In case certain reforms are not applicable to certain states, any inconsistencies will also be handled by the priority and reform action score.

Other major features of the dashboard:
Access Management for updating Data (Parameter and Reform Actions)

• Access Management rights will be provisioned for in the dashboard. For an Index, access will be available to the concerned Nodal Ministry for all the abstraction levels of parameters and reform area and reform actions. Based on further mapping of Parameters with Line Ministry, the corresponding access will be assigned by the Nodal M/Ds to respective Line Ministry/Department. Similarly, for each State, the corresponding access will be assigned by the Line M/Ds to respective State in case the data updation needs to be done for a parameter or sub-parameter from the State level.
• To start with, on provisioning of dashboard credentials, all Parameters, Reform Areas and Reform Actions mapped for an Index, by the Nodal Ministry, would need to be filled in the dashboard by the Nodal Ministry including weightages and targets.
• Thereafter as and when progress data on Parameters is available the same would need to be filled in by the authority which has been given the access rights. Similarly, for Reform actions, the progress update would have to be done as and when any progress is happening, by respective States (or by line Ministry/Department, if Reform Action has to be undertaken at Central level).

Report Generation

• Compliance Reports
  This report will indicate the percentage of compliance at State and Ministry level in entry of progress data on the dashboard.
• Progress Reports
  These reports will show progress of the index/parameters/sub-parameters as well as Reform Areas to the set target. There will capability to generate progress reports to capture Global Index-wise progress, ministry wise progress, state wise progress, Global Index/parameter/sub-parameter wise progress of all states, etc. The progress reports will be available for download for scoring and ranking as well as reforms actions.
• Maintaining Audit Trail The dashboard will maintain a Global Index-wise audit trail that can be accessed by Nodal Ministry and DMEO. It will be user friendly and have capability to keep track of any updates made in progress, targets, structure (parameter/ sub-parameters), reforms and reform actions. Date and time wise edits (with latest first) will be viewable.