The Department of Fertilizers headed by Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda has secured third rank out of 65 departments/ministries based on its performance in the implementation of Central government programmes/schemes.
It has bagged second place among major 16 economic ministries and departments.
The Department of Fertilizers bagged third place by scoring 4.11 on a scale of 5 on Data Governance Quality Index survey conducted by Development Monitoring and Evaluation Office (DMEO), Niti Aayog, to assess different ministries/departments’ performance in the implementation of Central sector schemes and Centrally sponsored schemes.
While the Ministry of Food Processing Industries secured first place with a 4.49 score, the Department of Economic Affairs ranked last with a score of 0.40.
The department under the leadership of Mr. Sadananda Gowda, former Chief Minister of Karnataka, has implemented “an innovative PoS solution enhancing their data preparedness levels”.
“The Department of Fertilizers uses desktop PoS and linkages with soil health cards to promote efficient sale of fertilizers and direct benefit transfer (DBT) of fertilizer subsidy to farmers” the Niti Aayog said.
The department has developed a desktop version of PoS as an alternative approach to support services through the PoS devices. It enables retailers who are having laptops and computers to use high speed broadband service for the sale of fertilizers, the Aayog said.
Noting the impact of PoS, Aayog quoting a case study said that “it has not only facilitated easy handling of fertilizer business at retail points but also reduced dependence on PoS devices, and made use of PoS very simple and easy to operate through the help of bigger screen of desktops”.
The survey was initiated to assess the data preparedness of ministries/departments on a standardised framework to promote competition among them and promote best practices. The aim was was to improve the implementation of government policies, schemes and programmes to achieve the desired goals.