Data Governance Quality Index: Department of Fertilizers ranked 2nd amongst the 16 Economic Ministries

A Survey white;">was conducted by the Development Monitoring and Evaluation Office (DMEO), NITI Ayog in order to assess performance of different Ministries or Departments’ on the implementation of Central Sector Schemes (CS) and Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS).

Key Highlights

• Department of Fertilizers under the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers has been ranked 2nd amongst the 16 Economic Ministries or Departments and
• It has also been ranked 3rd out of the 65 Ministries or Departments.
• The total score of the department was 4.11 on a scale of 5 in the Data Governance Quality Index (DGQI),
• The DMEO, Niti Aayog has undertaken DGQI exercise “Self-assessment based review of data preparedness levels” to produce a DGQI score card.

About The Survey

• Survey was initiated with an objective to assess data preparedness of Ministries or Departments on a standardized framework.
• The survey was also meant to drive healthy competition among them and promote a cooperative peer learning from best practices. 
• For the survey, an online questionnaire was prepared under six major themes of DGQI:

1. Data Generation;
2. Data Quality;
3. Use of Technology;
4. Data Analysis, Use and Dissemination;
5. Data Security and
6. HR Capacity and Case Studies.

• Weightage was assigned to the themes and sub-weightag to each question within every theme to give a final DGQI scores between 0 to 5 for every scheme.
• Ministries or Departments were classified in six categories:

1. Administrative,
2. Strategic,
3. Infrastructure,
4. Social,
5. Economic and
6. Scientific.

• Inputs have been collected from 65 Ministries or Departments implementing 250 CS or CSS schemes and their scores were accordingly calculated.

Significance

It will help to improve the implementation framework of government policies, schemes and programmes to achieve the desired goals.

Development Monitoring And Evaluation Office (DMEO)

This office was constituted in September 2015 by merging the Program Evaluation Office (PEO) and the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO). It is an office under NITI Aayog. DMEO’s vision is to improve the sustainable outcomes and impacts of the government. It is aimed at enabling the  high-quality monitoring and evaluation of government programs in order to improve effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability and equity of the service delivery, outcomes and impacts.