The National Statistical Office (NSO), under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI), has significantly advanced its comprehensive digital transformation journey over the past year. Building on the foundational launch of the eSankhyiki portal on National Statistics Day on 29th June 2024, the momentum has continued with the successful deployment of a more than a dozen new digital modules, portals, and websites, marking a pivotal first phase that prioritized data dissemination and data collection being the pubic facing services of the MoSPI.

Comprehensive Digital Infrastructure Development

The past year has witnessed the launch of several key digital assets that enhance transparency and improve data accessibility for researchers, policymakers, and the public. Prominent among these developments are the DI Lab (Data Innovation Lab), OCMS, Metadata portals, and new dedicated websites for the National Statistical System Training Academy (NSSTA) and the National Statistical Commission (NSC). Additionally, NSO has introduced public-facing dashboards for critical statistical domains including the Social Statistics Division (SSD), Annual Survey of Industries (ASI), Economic Census (EC), and National Sample Survey (NSS) as part of eSankhyiki portal, providing stakeholders with real-time access to India's official statistics. With these additions this portal has more than 135 million records. Latest addition to our digital infrastructure is our GoIStats mobile app due for the launch on the Statistics Day, 2025

Innovation Through Emerging Technologies

Demonstrating its commitment to innovation and future-readiness, MOSPI has identified seven key use cases for integrating emerging technologies into its statistical operations. The Ministry has successfully completed three Proofs of Concept (POCs) and initiated pilots for three use cases. This systematic approach aims to integrate proven technologies into the core statistical production system, ensuring that India's official statistics remain at the forefront of global statistical innovation. NSO has been also collaborating with International and multilateral agencies for mainstreaming these in their workflow. India is now a member of the UN Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics (UNCEBD). NSO, India was invited for presenting their institutional arrangement and use cases at United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) conference on Gen AI.

Strengthening Cybersecurity Framework

With the expansion of its digital ecosystem, MOSPI has placed the highest priority on securing its national data assets. Recognizing the critical importance of data security in the digital age, the Ministry has appointed a Chief Information Security Officer to lead and strengthen its cybersecurity framework, ensuring the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of India's statistical data infrastructure. An expert agency has also been hired for the purpose to ensure availability of expert manpower for such a critical area.

Strategic Phased Approach to Transformation

MOSPI has adopted a strategic, phased approach to its digital transformation initiative. The current phase focuses primarily on data dissemination and data collection, with the eSigma platform playing a crucial role in modernizing collection methodologies across various statistical operations and the portals and websites including eSankhyiki facilitates ease of data access. This systematic approach ensures that each component of the statistical production system is thoroughly optimized before progressing to the next phase. The upcoming phase will focus on improving the data processing to ensure faster and more efficient, statistical outputs. A comprehensive digital transformation implementation plan for the next phase is under finalisation and the entire transformation is likely to be completed at the earliest.

The Ministry is committed to completing the digital transformation process to ensure timely and quality data is consistently available for policy making en-route to Viksit Bharat. This digital transformation represents our unwavering commitment to making official statistics more timely, reliable, and accessible in line with the needs of a data-driven New India. Our goal is to empower every citizen, researcher, and policymaker with quality data that drives informed decision-making and supports India's ambitious development goals by 2047.

Digital transformation of official statistics enhances data dissemination and cybersecurity to support timely, quality data for policymaking. National statistical administration has advanced a digital transformation prioritising Data Dissemination and public-facing data collection through multiple portals, dashboards, and a forthcoming mobile application to expand access to official statistics. The programme identifies and pilots emerging-technology use cases with international collaboration to integrate proven tools into the statistical production system. Implementation follows a phased strategy that currently focuses on dissemination and collection, paired with strengthened Cybersecurity measures-including a Chief Information Security Officer and external expertise-to protect data integrity while planning subsequent enhancements to processing and timeliness of outputs.