A Government portal is widely understood and viewed as a single window platform for the integrated delivery of information and services by the Government to its Citizens. Government portals are constituent of a huge content repository which is a culmination of information sourced from and contributed by various government entities, all of which functions under the aegis of a principal body - which could be a central authority or part of a state or district administration. In the past few years, a large number of websites (close to 7000 in number) belonging to various constituents of the government have been published, offering a lot of information and services to the citizens. However, all of these websites follow different technology standards, design lay-outs and navigation patterns which in turn cause the citizens a lot of inconvenience. To peruse for information and access services available amongst such a wide array of portals requires a lot of learning on their part, thus defeating the very purpose of the initiative. Need was thus felt to establish a one-stop source for all government information and services, and this is what led to the genesis of National Portal of India (NPI) as a Mission Mode Project under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP). The aim here was to shield the citizen from the hassles of searching across a large number of sites, with a mind-boggling variety of navigation architecture, for accessing desired government information or services. In over five years of its existence, the National Portal of India has not only ended up immensely benefiting the end-users, but has also gained significant ground when it comes to fulfilling basic objectives of electronic governance, namely - enhancing transparency and increasing efficiency in service delivery. The National Portal of India has also turned out to be an effective medium for the participation of common citizens in the process of governance apart from encouraging the NPI visitors to voice their opinion on the information and services provided through the NPI using various interactive feedback tools on the NPI. ALKA MISHRA Senior Technical Director NIC HQ amishra@nic.in DURGA PRASAD MISRA Principal Systems Analyst, NIC HQ dpmisra@nic.in RATING OF SERVICES In its endeavour to cater to most of citizens' needs, the NPI plays host to over 1900 online services from various states/ministries/departments which are all bunched under the 'How Do I?' section of the portal. With an approximate 78,000 registered users and over 24 lakh hits per day - the portal is today scaling new heights of popularity and visibility of government services published on the National Portal of India. With new services being added on a daily basis to the huge repository already available, users' feedback plays an all important role to monitor health of the published services. To harness the same, a Rating Module has been introduced in the 'How Do I?' section on http://india.gov.in, which will enable users to consume and then rate the services published therein. The users are prompted to rate a particular service on the basis of two main aspects, these being 'Usefulness' and 'Ease of Access'. A provision is made within the interface for surfers to be able to see the current rating and number of votes on each of the mentioned aspects enjoyed by the said service. 'Usefulness' judges the actual value of a service in terms of the benefit it afforded the user, while 'Ease of Access' is meant to rate how easily and conveniently was the user able to access the facility provided by the service in question. Just by selecting the number of stars/rates (full or half) relevant to the corresponding aspect and pressing 'Submit' button it records the rate apart from increasing the vote count. Comments or suggestions from the users' end can also be posted within the same application window. User feedback not only facilitates NPI in improving and improvising, but also helps the team enhance manifold the end-user experience of the National Portal of India. Apart from being accorded space on individual service pages, description and details on the Rating Module has also been displayed upfront on the NPI homepage as part of the 'How Do I?' section to ensure optimum visibility of the functionality. The Rating Module implemented on the http://india.gov.in is generic in nature and developed using open source tools. The front-end functionality can be easily controlled or customized using various parameters of the back-end module viz. Rating Aspects can be widened to more than two parameters which are currently being used, or number of sections on which this rating functionality is to be incorporated or the rating scale required to be taken up etc. A citizen's single-window access to all there is to know about the Government and its subordinate bodies and authorities, http://india.gov.in stands at the apex of India's ICT pyramid. The information in the Portal has not only been well classified into distinct modules, but also interlinked at relevant places to provide the visitor with a holistic view. With numerous interactive tools, services and static content repositories - the National Portal of India is the one and only cyber face of the Government of India which is complete in all aspects.