Jharkhand has dropped five ranks from #15 last year to #20 this year in the overall e-governance score of Indian states. It has also dropped to #20 and #18 from #15 last year in the overall citizen and business satisfaction scores, respectively. Jharkhand has maintained its rank at #17 for e-readiness though from last year.

This only goes to show that the satisfaction with quality of e-governance services, ease of interaction and availability of services has deteriorated drastically as compared to last year. The survey also points out that the top pain areas in case of ease of interaction for citizens are agriculture and healthcare. Although the situation in case of agriculture has substantially improved from 40% to 55%, but this obviously has not been enough to satisfy the masses. Also, the contribution of some new areas like land/property, judiciary, state transport services, education, employment exchange and power utility has added to the dissatisfaction that took Jharkhand to the lowest rank in terms of overall satisfaction.

For the same category in business, there is an improvement in financial assistances from 48.6% to 61.8% but there is still a long way to go to satisfy the business needs.

The quality of e-governance services among citizens has more or less deteriorated in categories such as education, land/property, municipal corporation, water utility, and agriculture. In education the quality has improved, from 41.2% in 2007 to 58.8% this year. Similar is the case with business categories across various areas as compared to last year.

There is also a great need to look after the two aspects of e-governance services, ie, quality and ease of interaction and this can be achieved by completing all the projects that are in the pipeline as per set deadlines, and by implementing the completed projects fast so that the affect of services may reach the citizens and businesses of Jharkhand.

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