For nearly a decade, India’s digital governance story has been defined by scale. From Digital India and India Stack to Aadhaar, DigiLocker and UMANG, the government has built one of the world’s largest digital public infrastructures. The next phase, however, will be judged not by the number of services available online, but by how intelligently, seamlessly and personally citizens can access them.
That is the key takeaway from Adobe’s 2025 Digital Government Index (DGI) for India.
The report places India’s overall Digital Government Index score at 58.2, signalling a shift from large-scale digitisation towards creating integrated, accessible and AI-ready citizen services. Rather than measuring policy intent, the index evaluates how government websites perform across customer experience, digital self-service and site performance, while introducing AI readiness and personalization as new indicators of digital maturity.
The findings suggest that India’s digital foundations are strong, but the next gains will come from improving usability, discoverability and citizen engagement rather than simply adding more digital services.
“India’s digital government journey is entering a new phase. The focus is no longer just digitizing services, but making them more intuitive, accessible and AI-ready. By improving discoverability, personalization and content quality, ministries can deliver better citizen experiences while ensuring trusted government information remains visible in an AI-first world,” said Venu Juvvala, Head, Customer Experience Orchestration business, Adobe India
Perhaps the most significant addition to this year’s study is the introduction of AI readiness as a benchmark.
As citizens increasingly interact with generative AI assistants and AI-powered search instead of traditional websites, governments face a new challenge: ensuring that official information remains visible, trustworthy and easily discoverable in AI-driven environments.
Across the ministries assessed, AI readiness scores ranged between 51.1 and 73.1, indicating that while several departments have begun preparing for AI-enabled citizen engagement, maturity levels remain uneven.
The report suggests that improving technical website structures, metadata and content discoverability will become as important as building new digital services themselves.
Digital Self-Service Continues to Improve
Among all the dimensions measured, Digital Self-Service emerged as India’s strongest-performing category, improving 2% to 62.2.
A major contributor has been India’s investment in multilingual digital services.
The report highlights the integration of Bhashini, India’s national AI-powered language platform, into Indian Railways’ conversational chatbots, allowing citizens to access services and information in multiple Indian languages.
This reflects a broader shift towards inclusive digital public services that reduce linguistic barriers for millions of users.
Personalisation Moves Into the Mainstream
Another notable finding is the growing maturity of personalization capabilities across government services.
Scores ranged from 50 to 81.5, with leading ministries ranking among the strongest performers in the Asia-Pacific region.
The report attributes much of this progress to digital public infrastructure such as Aadhaar, DigiLocker and UMANG, which enable more contextual and personalised citizen interactions.
The Ministry of Railways is highlighted as an example of this evolution through Disha 2.0, its voice-enabled virtual assistant that supports multilingual AI-powered ticketing and delivers context-aware responses across different stages of the citizen journey.
Mobile-First Progress Continues
India’s mobile-first approach to digital governance continues to show results.
The report notes a 1.1% improvement in mobile experience, reflecting growing adoption of platforms such as UMANG and DigiLocker and reinforcing the country’s strategy of delivering government services primarily through smartphones.
Given India’s large mobile internet population, this remains one of the country’s strongest advantages in expanding digital public services.
Accessibility Remains the Biggest Challenge
Despite progress in AI readiness and self-service, the report identifies significant shortcomings in the overall citizen experience.
Customer Experience declined by 3.7%, suggesting there is still considerable room to improve navigation, usability and service design.
Even more concerning is the decline in accessibility and readability.
Accessibility scores fell by 4.1%, while readability dropped sharply by 23.7%, highlighting the need for simpler language, better information architecture and stronger accessibility practices across government websites.
These findings suggest that while digital services may exist, they are not always easy for citizens to find, understand or use.
A New Phase for Digital India
The Adobe Digital Government Index reflects an important transition in India’s digital governance journey.
The first phase focused on bringing government services online and building nationwide digital infrastructure through initiatives such as Digital India, India Stack and Gati Shakti.
The next phase is likely to focus on making those services more intelligent, personalised and AI-ready.
As generative AI reshapes how citizens search for information and interact with public services, success will increasingly depend not only on the availability of digital services, but also on how effectively government platforms deliver intuitive, accessible and trusted experiences.
The 2025 Adobe Digital Government Index combines user testing, third-party technical audits and content assessments. The India edition evaluated the official websites of the Ministry of Cooperation, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Ministry of External Affairs, Ministry of Railways, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, and the Ministry of Tourism.