From Global Trends to Local Transformation: The Evolution of Digital Governance in Urban India
Over the past decade, the idea of “digital government” has moved from buzzword to blueprint, reshaping how countries deliver public services. From Estonia’s digital-first citizen services to Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative, governments across the world have leaned on technology to become more responsive, inclusive, and efficient. At the heart of these efforts lies Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI): open, interoperable systems that allow institutions to serve citizens better and more equitably.
India’s digital journey has followed a similar trajectory, distinct in its ambition and scale. With the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) laying the groundwork and the Digital India Mission launched in 2015, the country embraced a vision of a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. But as national infrastructure matured, a crucial challenge came into focus—how do we bring this same transformation to India’s rapidly urbanising landscape?
By the mid-2010s, a few pioneering cities—like Pune, Surat, Bhubaneswar, and Ahmedabad—began experimenting with digitising core urban services like property tax, water connections, building plan approvals, and grievance redressal. These early efforts were encouraging, but they exposed several systemic challenges. Many municipal corporations adopted closed, proprietary software that offered limited flexibility, was costly to scale, and created dependency on specific vendors. Others struggled with fragmented systems—different departments using different platforms, making interoperability a major hurdle. In many cases, staff lacked training or digital literacy, leading to underutilisation of the systems. The result? Citizen experience remained inconsistent, and municipal performance was uneven.
At the same time, India’s broader digital ecosystem was undergoing a quiet revolution. Innovations like India Stack, IndiEA, OpenAPI Policy, etc., further inspired the National Urban Innovation Stack (NUIS) and open-data registries, which serve as building blocks for modular, scalable digital systems that enable the participation of multiple stakeholders in this process of developing, aggregating, and contextualising micro-service-based solutions. These developments inspired civil society organisations like the eGov Foundation to develop DIGIT: an open-source platform built specifically for urban governance. States like Andhra Pradesh and Odisha were among the first to adopt this approach, appreciating its flexibility, transparency, and vendor-neutral architecture.
In February 2021, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) and Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MEITY), Government of India, jointly launched the National Urban Digital Mission (NUDM) as a response to these growing needs, designed to bring digital transformation to all Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) across the country. Positioned as an evolution of the Smart Cities Mission and AMRUT, NUDM partnered with eGov Foundation to revamp and scale DIGIT, integrating enhancements by the in-house technology team. This led to the creation of the National Urban Governance Platform (NUGP)—later renamed Urban Platform for deliverY of Online Governance(UPYOG).
UPYOG is now the foundation of NUDM’s approach. It offers a vanilla, open-source platform with 16 essential urban service modules—from Property Tax, Trade licences, and Water to Building plan approvals and NMAM-based Finance & Accounts to name a few. Its core strength lies in adaptability: states can tailor it to local rules and workflows while still benefiting from a standardised, scalable solution delivered significantly sooner than legacy systems. Since the platform is deemed open source, it eliminates the risks of vendor lock-in and reduces implementation costs.
NUDM, at its core, seeks to enhance citizens’ ease of living, make urban governance more accountable, improve the ease of doing business, and strengthen municipal finances. With the national dashboard, Urban Monitoring for Efficient and Effective Decision-making (UMEED), NUDM combines real-time transaction data from across states to benchmark performance and enable evidence-driven policy decisions.
As NUDM continues to work hand-in-hand with states and cities, it represents a maturing model of digital governance in India—one that’s collaborative, data-informed, and rooted in the needs of both administrators and citizens. The journey is ongoing, but the foundations for a digitally empowered urban future are firmly in place. The subsequent blogs in this series shall capture the nuances of the mission for a better understanding.
Sushant Anand is a Senior Program Associate at the Centre for Digital Governance (CDG), National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA), and leads Research & Knowledge Management
Mallika Nambiar is a Programme Associate at the Centre for Digital Governance (CDG), National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) and supports Knowledge Management and Strategic Communications
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the blog are personal and are expressed are based on the programme’s ongoing work and current understanding of the subject. Information provided is for general purposes only and may be subject to change. Any external links are provided for informational purposes and do not signify endorsement. This content does not replace any official government communication or notification