Guidelines For Indian Government Websites

National Informatics Centre (NIC) has developed the Guidelines For Indian Government Websites (GIGW) which has been adopted by Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG), Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances & Pension, Government of India

The first edition of the GIGW was released in 2009. A revised edition with the inclusion of mobile app guidelines was released during 2018. The laterst versiob GIGW 3.0 was released during 2023.

Objective of GIGW

The GIGW aims to set standards for making Indian government websites/apps user-centric, more user-friendly and secure. Conformity with these guidelines will ensure a high degree of consistency and uniformity in the content coverage, presentation security and accessibility and promote excellence in government solutions in the Indian web space. They enable the government websites/apps conform to the essential prerequisites of the UUU trilogy of usability, user-centricity and universal accessibility. 

Scope of GIGW

The GIGW covers both websites and mobile apps.

They cover aspects related to Quality, Accessibility, Cybersecurity and Lifecycle management.  

The guidelines are structured under the following heads:

• Statement: Requirement or checkpoint to meet the particular guideline.
• Benefits: Positive outcomes achieved by following the requirements, such as improving user experience, accessibility, security and trust-building with citizens.
• Government organisation action: Actions pertaining to the owner government organisation. These will be undertaken by the respective WIM nominated by the organisation.
• Developer action: Specific tasks and actions a developer is responsible for in order to comply with the guidelines and ensure the website/app meets the desired standards of quality, usability and effectiveness.
• Evaluator action: Refers to testing of the website/app manually or with automated tools to verify conformity with this checkpoint.

GIGW 3.0 has been formulated jointly with Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) Directorate of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), so that the experience of conformity with GIGW gathered by the STQC Directorate auditors and the cybersecurity experience and knowledge of CERT-In also inform the GIGW.

To access the complete guidelines, click here.

How to use GIGW 3.0

Government organisations are expected to read, understand and implement these guidelines on all of their web-based initiatives. In other words, all the websites/apps owned by government organisations must comply with these guidelines. It is recommended that browser-based intranet applications should also follow these guidelines. Depending upon their specific requirements, government organisations may draw up short-term and long-term timebound implementation plans for achieving conformity with these guidelines.

Source :GIGW website