Why in news:

• Jammu and Kashmir will soon have a district-level Good Governance Index, Union minister Jitendra Singh has announced recently.
• With this development, Jammu and Kashmir will become the first Union Territory in the country to have such a district-level Good Governance Index.

Key Points:

• The Centre government will set up the index and the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances will carry out this task in collaboration with the Jammu and Kashmir government.
• The framework of the proposed Index has been finalised with the technical support from the Centre for Good Governance, Hyderabad.
• The government has indicated that he index will enable each district of Jammu and Kashmir to rise to the level of some of the best-administered districts of the country.
• The emphasis will be on timebound disposal of files and other matters, increased transparency, accountability, and citizen participation.
• The framework will have 58 indicators that assess different aspects of development and district administration in various sectors.
• The sectors under consideration will be such as agriculture, commerce and industry, human resource development, public health, public infrastructure and utilities, economic governance, welfare and development, public safety, judiciary, and citizen-centric governance.
• The centre government is keen to replicate the governance practices of other states and territories in Jammu and Kashmir in line with the idea of “maximum governance, minimum government
• As per the official sources, once the governance model is successfully set up, it will be taken to the block level.

Good Governance Index

• Good Governance Index is a comprehensive framework designed to assess the State of Governance across the States and UTs which enables ranking of States/Districts.
• The objective of Good Governance Index is to create a tool that can be used uniformly across the States to assess the impact of various interventions taken up by the Central and State Governments including UTs.
• Based on the Good Governance Framework, the Index provides a comparative picture among the States while developing a competitive spirit for improvement.
• The Good Governance Index 2021 says that 20 States have improved their composite GGI scores over the GGI 2019 index scores.
• The Good Governance Index is envisaged as a biannual exercise.
   

National Centre for Good Governance (NCGG):

• It is an autonomous institute under Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances, Union Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions.
• Its objective is to promote good governance through Capacity Building on Public Policy and Governance both at National and International Level and carrying out studies/ action research on issues relating to governance.
• Its head office is at New Delhi and registered office at Mussoorie.
• The National Centre for Good Governance traces its origin to the National Institute of Administrative Research (NIAR).
• NIAR was set up in 1995 by the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA).
• NIAR was subsequently rechristened with an expanded mandate, as NCGG, which was inaugurated in 2014.