GS Paper II

News Excerpt:

Recently,  the Information Technology Minister unveiled the NITI for States (NFS) digital platform to strengthen cooperation between the Centre and states in achieving growth objectives.

Key Points:

• Apart from the online portal, Niti Aayog will also launch a voice-enabled Viksit Bharat Strategy Room in its premises, which will in future have multilingual capabilities in 22 languages. 
• The platform repository has been input in the room to enable rich data visualization for immersive engagement with knowledge and insights for effective in-person discussions and decision making.

About NFS:

• It is developed by the central think tank NITI Aayog. 
• NFS serves as an integrated platform featuring 7,500 best practices from state governments and over a thousand case studies. 
• This wealth of information, combined with the Aayog’s support, can be utilised to devise tailored solutions for specific states.
• Aim: It aims to integrate data across states, centralising findings to inform future decisions by state governments based on data-driven insights.
• While the platform will be accessible online to all to help think-tanks, academia etc. 
• The primary goal is to enable better policy making as a ‘one stop shop’ for officials down to local levels to access robust, contextually relevant and actionable knowledge and insights for quality decision making.
• The objective of the platform is to share data and best practices and enable cross-learning as part of Niti Aayog’s State Support Mission, and make decision making by bureaucracy more informed and efficient.
• The platform is integrated with Niti Aayog’s National Data Analytics Platform as the main data source.

Features of Platform

• NFS includes curated training modules for government officials, focusing on enhancing behavioural, functional, and domain knowledge.
• Helpdesks staffed by domain experts from the Aayog will address queries from state officials. 
• These skill development modules align with the Integrated Government Online Training (iGOT) Karmayogi platform.
• The platform incorporates real-time data updation and monitoring, spanning 10 sectors and two cross-cutting themes. 
• Sectors include agriculture, education, energy, health, livelihoods and skilling, manufacturing, micro, small and medium enterprise, tourism, urban, water resources, and WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene). 
• Cross-cutting themes encompass gender and climate change.

NITI aayog’s role:

• NITI Aayog can play in guiding states towards fulfilling their developmental objectives in consonance with the central government’s growth.

Significance of platform:

• The platform can play an important role in facilitating holistic growth.
• Niti for States will have a multi-sectoral live repository of 7,500 best practices, 5,000 policy documents, over 900 datasets, 1,400 data profiles of states, districts, blocks etc. broken down by demography and socioeconomic indicators, and 350 NITI publications.
• The platform is an intuitive and user-friendly interface that allows users to easily navigate; and it is accessible through multiple devices including mobile phones.
• It will support cutting-edge level functionaries like district collectors and block-level functionaries by giving them access to innovative best practices across various States and UTs.