S Jaishankar launches MEA Performance Smartboard

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Wednesday launched MEA Performance Smartboard, an initiative aimed at putting performance indicators of the ministry at the disposal of the people in a "smart and uncluttered manner."

Using the Dashboard, government organisations can track key performance metrics of both individual agencies and cross-departmental activities, with the aim that the use of these metrics become a standard tool in managing department and programme performance in the future

"Our government has consistently striven towards expanding the use of different transparency tools across ministries. Creation of Dashboards is one such approach to make sense of the large quantity of data that the Ministry receives," said Jaishankar.

The minister explained that by using the Dashboard, a user can, say, view the data on citizen-centric services like visas, Pilgrims, and OCI Cards, amongst others, along with data on Trade and Commerce across all 191 Missions and Posts of MEA around the globe with a "single click."

"Information on Iconic Projects undertaken by MEA in various countries and the Grants and Loans extended as Development Assistance to countries abroad is also readily visible," said Jaishankar.

The Performance Smartboard can be said to be an integration of three types of Dashboards - Operational (for monitoring in real-time), Tactical (for analysis and benchmarking) and, Strategic (for tracking the achievement of strategic objectives).

"We believe that data empowers people. It is our intention to give more power to the people and to respond to their needs in an efficient and transparent manner by being at the forefront of bringing accountability and accessibility to them," Jaishankar added.