Why in news ?
- At the Fifth National Conference of Chief Secretaries, the Prime Minister urged States to replicate PRAGATI (Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation) at the State level and to set up Data Strategy Units and Deregulation Cells in government offices.
- The push reflects a shift toward technology-led governance, data-driven decision-making, faster project monitoring, and regulatory simplification to improve service delivery and economic competitiveness.
Relevance
- GS-II (Governance, e-Governance, Public Administration & Service Delivery)
- Tech-enabled monitoring, inter-governmental coordination, grievance systems
- GS-II / Reforms in Institutions
- Deregulation cells, Regulatory Impact Assessment, data-driven governance
Basics — What is PRAGATI?
- Launched: 2015 as a digital governance & monitoring platform.
- Nature: Video-conference + GIS + project dashboard integrating data from multiple ministries.
- Objective: Resolve inter-departmental bottlenecks, accelerate public infrastructure & social sector projects, and review grievance redressal.
- Participants: PM, Union Secretaries, Chief Secretaries, State officials.
- Outputs: Time-bound resolution of issues across roads, railways, power, coal, smart cities, housing, irrigation, environment clearances.
Performance indicators :
- Hundreds of projects reviewed across sectors; cumulative investment value in lakh-crore range.
- Focus on public grievance resolution, central-state coordination, and last-mile delivery.
What the PM proposed — key directives to States ?
- Replicate PRAGATI-type platforms in States
- Create State-level dashboards, project review systems, and monthly monitoring headed by CMs/CSs.
- Set up Data Strategy Units (DSUs)
- Build data warehouses, analytics capacity, and policy dashboards for evidence-based governance.
- Create Deregulation Cells in departments
- Identify outdated, redundant, or overlapping regulations; simplify compliance for citizens & businesses.
- Improve regulatory monitoring
- Departments to maintain reform-progress trackers and outcome metrics.
- Reduce time spent on routine meetings; strengthen virtual coordination.
- Encourage ‘Made in India’, quality standards, and logistics-efficiency reforms through better monitoring.
Why this matters — governance and development relevance ?
- Project delays = economic loss (cost overruns, stalled assets, service delivery gaps).
- PRAGATI-type systems cut coordination lags, improve accountability and inter-governmental convergence.
- Data Strategy Units enable:
- targeted welfare delivery, predictive analytics, citizen grievance mapping
- evidence-linked budgeting & policy iteration.
- Deregulation Cells support ease of doing business, reduce compliance burden, and align with Manufacturing, Logistics & Digital Economy goals.
Structural gaps these reforms seek to address
- Fragmented data silos across departments.
- Manual monitoring → limited real-time visibility of project milestones.
- Weak institutional mechanisms for regulatory review & sunset of outdated rules.
- Capacity asymmetry between Union vs State administrative systems.
Implementation challenges
- Data quality, interoperability & privacy safeguards must be ensured.
- Need specialised analytics talent, IT infrastructure, cybersecurity at the State level.
- Avoid dashboard-centric compliance without field-level problem-solving.
- Clear KPIs, grievance outcomes, and citizen-centric metrics required.
- Deregulation must be consultative to avoid dilution of essential safeguards (labour, environment, consumer safety).
Way forward — policy priorities for States
- Establish Chief Secretary–led PRAGATI cells with sectoral war rooms.
- Build State Data Platforms integrating land, health, education, urban, logistics, and welfare datasets.
- Adopt open standards, data-governance frameworks, audit trails, and privacy-by-design.
- Institutionalise Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) and annual regulation review cycles.
- Link dashboards to citizen feedback loops and independent evaluation.
- Invest in capacity building (data science, programme management, systems thinking).
