India has recorded a Digital Government Index (DGI) score of 58.2 in 2025, signalling a shift from foundational digitisation toward more integrated, accessible, and AI-ready citizen services, according to a report released on Friday, 10 July by Adobe. The findings mark a new phase in India's digital government journey, with emphasis now placed on making services more intuitive and discoverable in an AI-first environment.

Key Findings from the 2025 Index

The 2025 Digital Government Index evaluated government websites across three core dimensions — customer experience, site performance, and digital self-service — while also introducing new assessments of AI readiness and personalisation capabilities. The study combined user testing, third-party technical audits, and content assessments to arrive at its conclusions.

Digital Self-Service emerged as the strongest dimension, scoring 62.2 — up 2 per cent — driven primarily by advances in multilingual access and language translation. Mobile experience improved by 1.1 per cent, reflecting India's mobile-first approach and the growing adoption of platforms such as UMANG and DigiLocker.

Where Gaps Remain

Despite the gains, the report identified notable areas requiring attention. Customer experience eased 3.7 per cent, highlighting opportunities to strengthen accessibility, readability, and overall usability. Accessibility dropped 4.1 per cent and readability fell a sharp 23.7 per cent, underscoring the need to simplify content structure across government portals.

AI readiness among assessed ministries ranged between 51.1 and 73.1, indicating uneven progress across the government ecosystem. While official government websites demonstrated strong trust and authority, improvements in technical structure and discoverability are still needed to ensure reliable public information remains visible in AI-powered search tools and digital assistants.

What the Government and Industry Said

'By improving discoverability, personalisation 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 of Customer Experience Orchestration Business at Adobe India.

The report noted that India's digital transformation continues to be shaped by flagship initiatives including Digital India, India Stack, and Gati Shakti. It also highlighted Indian Railways' integration of Bhashini — the national AI-powered language platform — to support conversational chatbots that help citizens navigate services and queries across Indian languages.

Why This Matters

India's push toward AI-ready governance comes at a time when governments globally are racing to embed artificial intelligence into public service delivery. The index findings suggest that while India has made measurable strides in self-service and mobile access, the quality of content and user experience on government portals risks becoming a bottleneck. Notably, a 23.7 per cent drop in readability is a significant red flag — complex, jargon-heavy content can undermine even the most technically advanced platforms.

As AI-powered search engines and digital assistants increasingly mediate how citizens access government information, the discoverability and trustworthiness of official portals will become ever more critical. The next phase of India's digital government push will likely hinge on whether ministries can close the gap between technical capability and actual citizen usability.