Policy Update
Krishna Sunish
Background
In the last two years, India’s Government has made giant achievements in digital governance, particularly under the flagship initiative Digital India. As more government departments adopt digital mechanisms, data generation at both the ministry and state levels has increased. In such a situation, effective data analytics becomes a necessity to transform raw data into policy-sensitive information.
To cater to this need, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), in partnership with the National Informatics Centre (NIC) and NIC Services Inc. (NICSI), developed an integrated self-service analytics platform named Tejas. Introduced in 2021, Tejas, which stands for “Technology Enabled Justified Analytics Solution”, was developed under the Centre of Excellence for Data Analytics (CEDA) to provide high-powered, accessible, and scalable data visualisation and analysis features to Indian government departments.
Tejas is focused on the larger vision of democratizing data science so that non-technical users can also make use of high-end datasets. Deployed on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, Tejas is affordable, cloud-based, and doesn’t need third-party business intelligence software.
Functioning
The Tejas portal is a self-service data analytics platform developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) and NICSI (CEDA) under the guidance of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). It provides a comprehensive solution for discovering, preparing, analysing, deploying, and sharing data insights.
The platform supports linking to various types of data sources, including flat files, cloud services, APIs, and live databases. Tejas provides drag-and-drop support for data preparation, blending, and cleaning. It supports creating structured datasets that can be analysed without writing a single line of code. The integration of Geospatial Data using Bharat Maps also enables the departments to generate location-based insights.
Key features include:
- User-defined dashboards with defined Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
- Intrinsic graphics with drill-down and comparative bar charts
- Scorecards to track performance across departments or time periods
- Routine updates and automated protocols
- Intra-departmental discussion commenting and collaboration tools
Personalized permissions are also enabled by the platform, leaving it to you to determine who can view, edit, or share the visualizations. Reports and dashboards can be embedded into web pages, downloaded, or shared through NIC Mail, Sandes, or social media. The configuration encourages transparency and enhances communication.
Tejas provides authorities with the tools to react to urgent analytical inquiries:
What is the type of data being captured? Who are the top performers on a given KPI? What are the root causes impacting performance? Which areas or segments need the most attention?
The portal also includes a demo version to facilitate practice and training. It can be accessed through two modes of registration: Parichay-based login and self-registration on the NICSI cloud.
Performance
Since its release in 2021, Tejas has been adopted in government departments at various levels. Quantitative data such as the number of active dashboards, onboarded departments or evidence of inter-sectoral performance enhancement is not publicly available. Going by secondary sources such as annual reports and government reports, early adoption has been most apparent in urban and rural local government, district administration, and state policy oversight.
One of the key measures of the growing visibility of the platform is the growing number of government departments opting for indigenous analytics software as opposed to proprietary software. NIC data indicate that over 75% of state applications supported by NIC have either begun migrating towards Tejas or are being considered for evaluation.
Apart from that, the budgetary outlay of the Digital India Programme has grown consistently over the past five years. MeitY has been allocated ₹16,549 crore for FY 2023-24, part of which is utilized in enabling digital infrastructure platforms like Tejas. It must be taken into account that cloud-based delivery through Tejas minimizes hosting costs, and open-source architecture makes public spending sustainable.
Technical team assessments at NIC have indicated that departments that are employing Tejas for internal monitoring have indicated:
- Faster and more streamlined generation of performance reports
- Improved monitoring of citizen grievance redressal
- Increased application of evidence-based policymaking
Impact
The strategic importance of Tejas is that it changes the paradigm of Indian governance from being reactive to predictive. With quality analysis being presented to government policymakers in real-time with decreased training, the platform ensures evidence-based policy-making.
The most important contributions of Tejas are:
- Capacity Building: It prevents reliance on external data consultants and enables in-house staff to take care of analytics.
- Equity and Inclusion: All under-resourced or remote departments have the same analysis tools as departments based in the city.
- Monitoring and Evaluation: Tejas strengthens the evaluation of schemes of the government in a manner where schemes are coordinated according to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
- Transparency and Accountability: Increased access to information allows increased monitoring by watchdog agencies and increased public trust.
Tejas’ induction is also consonant with India’s technology independence drive because it encourages the use of indigenous equipment developed from open-source technologies. In replacing costly foreign business intelligence software, Tejas encourages self-reliance with the Aatmanirbhar Bharat vision.
Emerging Issues
As great as it is, the Tejas Portal is marred by implementation issues. Adoption remains incomplete in the majority of states and ministries, with some ministries still yet to implement the platform fully due to ongoing data silos and a lack of trained personnel. Public access remains limited, with the majority of dashboards remaining internal-only within the government, thus relegating civil society organizations, researchers, and citizens to accessing data in real-time.
Data quality and standardization also hinder progress, with legacy databases having partial or inconsistent data, compromising analytics accuracy. Language and accessibility also remain a challenge, with the platform being predominantly English, thus restricting its use in regional and rural areas. With the impending Digital Personal Data Protection Act, strengthening the platform’s privacy and data protection pillars to ensure responsible and legal data governance is more than urgent.
Suggestions
It is crucial that MeitY and NIC organize systematic training and certification for users of every department. Public dashboards of anonymized data must be established to enable transparency and citizen involvement. Moreover, the adoption of Tejas must be made obligatory for routine programme review in all departments and ministries to institutionalize data-driven governance as a culture. To make it more accessible and inclusive, the interface must be capable of supporting multiple Indian languages. Lastly, compliance mechanisms on the portal must be upgraded and harmonized from time to time with new data protection and privacy legislations to enable safe and sound use of government data.
Way Forward
Tejas is a milestone in India’s digital governance journey. By providing ease and robust analytical capability together, it facilitates decision-making in government departments at many levels based on data. It facilitates enhanced policy-making, monitoring in real time, and people’s participation in governance, with reduced reliance on expensive foreign BI solutions.
In the future, a planned integration strategy, robust training systems and inter-ministerial coordination would be necessary to leverage the Tejas effect. Enhancing the platform, through AI analytics and predictive modeling, can further revolutionize India’s governance model.
Drawing strength from strong institutional foundations and ongoing improvement based on feedback, Tejas has the potential to be a cornerstone of New India’s digital policy framework—one that is intelligent, inclusive, and transparent.
Selected References and Important Links
- Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). (2021). Tejas Brochure. National Informatics Centre. https://nicsi.com/pbd/files/Tejas%20Brochure.pdf
- National Informatics Centre. (2021). Tejas Portal. Retrieved from https://www.tejasvi.gov.in
- NICSI Cloud Services. (2021). Tejas SaaS Registration. https://cloud.nicsi.nic.in
- Digital India Programme: Union Budget 2023-24. Retrieved from https://www.indiabudget.gov.in
- PIB Press Releases. (2021–2024). https://www.pib.gov.in
About the Contributor: Krishna Sunish is a research IMPRI (Impact and Policy Research Institute), is currently pursuing her bachelor’s in economics from CMS College Kottayam (Autonomous). The article is written as part of the Policy Updates initiative under the supervision of the IMPRI research team.
Acknowledgement: The author extends her sincere gratitude to Aasthaba Jadeja and fellow interns, who provided guidance throughout the process.
Disclaimer: All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organisation.
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