India’s digital government is AI-ready but not yet citizen-ready

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TL;DR:

India’s digital government is becoming more AI-ready, scoring 58.2 in Adobe’s index. But sharp declines in readability, accessibility and customer experience show that better technology will matter only if public services remain simple, inclusive and easy to use.

Article:

India’s digital government has moved into an AI-readiness phase, but Adobe’s latest benchmark shows that the citizen experience is not keeping pace. The 2025 Digital Government Index gives India an overall score of 58.2 after assessing six central ministry websites through user testing, technical audits and content reviews. The shift matters now because citizens increasingly discover public information through AI assistants and AI-powered search, making website structure, metadata and trustworthy content part of service delivery.

The strongest result came from digital self-service, which rose 2% to 62.2, while mobile experience improved 1.1%. AI-readiness scores across the ministries ranged from 51.1 to 73.1, indicating progress but uneven execution. UMANG provides a common entry point for government services, while Indian Railways has deployed conversational tools such as AskDISHA 2.0 for ticketing and enquiries.

The weak spots are more consequential. Customer experience fell 3.7%, accessibility declined 4.1%, and readability dropped 23.7%. An AI-ready portal that citizens cannot easily navigate or understand risks automating exclusion rather than reducing it.

“The focus is no longer just digitizing services, but making them more intuitive, accessible and AI-ready,” said Venu Juvvala, who leads customer-experience orchestration at Adobe India.

The policy priority should move from adding more digital touchpoints to improving the quality of existing ones. Ministries need plain-language content, consistent metadata, multilingual access, accessible design and clear accountability for outdated information. AI can make government services easier to find, but only when the underlying public information is accurate, structured and usable. India has built the digital rails; the next test is whether every citizen can board.