CONFORMANCE
Scored against GIGW 3.0, including where it fails
GIGW 3.0 — the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites and Apps — is the standard an Indian government web property is actually held to, published by National Informatics Centre, STQC Directorate (MeitY) and CERT-In. This page scores this build against 37 of its requirements. It is written to be checked, not to be believed: 6 are not met, 4 have never been tested, and 3 are refused on purpose.
Counted from the table below at the moment this page was served, never written down separately. A summary that can drift from its own table is the defect this avoids.
What the standard is
Third edition, after GIGW 1.0 (2009) and 2.0 (2019). 88 guidelines across four areas, with an accessibility target of WCAG 2.1 Level AA.
- 25Quality5.1.1–5.1.25
- 50Accessibility5.2.x
- 3Cybersecurity5.3.x
- 10Lifecycle management5.4.1–5.4.10
Conformity is certified by the STQC Directorate as a Certified Quality Website (CQW), and the assessment has two halves: a front-end test and a backend audit of documented policies and records. A site cannot be certified on its markup alone, which is why several rows below are organisational rather than technical — and why a prototype could not be certified even if every technical row were green.
One caveat that changes how this table should be read. GIGW 3.0 does not label individual guidelines “Mandatory” or “Recommended”. The word “mandatory” appears twice in the whole manual and never against a website element. The level shown on each row is our classification from the verb in that guideline’s statement — “must” and “shall” read as mandatory. Presenting it as a flag the manual carries would misrepresent the document.
The three refusals
These are the rows most likely to be read as failures, so they are pulled out rather than left for a reader to find. Each is a decision, and each would be the wrong thing to “fix”.
Refused. This build is not a government site, and displaying the State Emblem on one that is not would breach the State Emblem of India (Prohibition of Improper Use) Act 2005 — the Act GIGW 5.1.1 itself cites. A "CS" monogram is used instead. This row is the clearest case in the table where conforming would be the wrong act.
Refused. A gov.in domain is issued to a government body; a prototype that is not one must not sit on it, and could not obtain it. This build is served from a workers.dev subdomain precisely so that no visitor can mistake it for the real portal.
Refused. A Web Information Manager is a named government officer. Printing a name in that slot for a prototype would fabricate an office-holder, which is worse than leaving the slot empty. Note also that the widely-used term "Nodal Officer" is not GIGW terminology — the manual says Web Information Manager throughout.
The full table
| Ref | Requirement | Status | What is actually true |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5.1.1 | State Emblem of India displayed on the homepage of a Central Government Ministry sitereads as mandatory | Refused | Refused. This build is not a government site, and displaying the State Emblem on one that is not would breach the State Emblem of India (Prohibition of Improper Use) Act 2005 — the Act GIGW 5.1.1 itself cites. A "CS" monogram is used instead. This row is the clearest case in the table where conforming would be the wrong act. |
| 5.1.2 | Ownership information on the homepage and every important entry pagereads as mandatory | Partly met | The footer carries a brand block and the independent-prototype disclosure site-wide. GIGW also asks that each page be "a standalone entity in terms of ownership, navigation and context"; breadcrumbs are not yet site-wide. |
| 5.1.3 | Source stated for third-party documents reproduced in part or fullreads as mandatory | Met | Every outside reference resolves to a source record on /reference — 405 of them, each naming the authority and printing the canonical address as text. /sources carries the register. |
| 5.4.3 | Copyright Policy publishedreads as mandatory | Not met | GIGW 5.4.3 Developer action is verbatim: "citizen-facing policies like copyright policy, privacy policy and terms and conditions must be published on the website." Privacy and terms exist; a standalone copyright policy does not. |
| 5.4.3 | Privacy Policy publishedreads as mandatory | Met | /privacy, and it states what this build actually retains: 30 days for guest workspaces and sign-in sessions, and that the DigiLocker exchange is simulated end to end. |
| 5.4.3 | Terms and conditions publishedreads as mandatory | Met | /terms. |
| 5.4.3e | Hyperlinking Policy, and a mechanism notifying a visitor that a link leaves the sitereads as mandatory | Partly met | The wording exists inside /terms but is not a standalone policy. The external hand-off is handled by routing outward links to in-site source records instead, which is a deliberate departure — see the note on 5.1.12. |
| 5.1.8 | Content Archival Policy; outdated content removed or archived; expiry date on time-sensitive contentreads as mandatory | Not met | No archive route and no expiry field on circulars. The data path exists (/api/v1/circulars), so this is unbuilt rather than impossible. |
| 5.4.3b/d | Content Review Policy and Content Moderation & Approval Policyreads as mandatory | Not met | Organisational artefacts audited in STQC’s backend review, not page elements. A prototype has no content board to document. |
| 5.1.5 | Last updated / reviewed date on the homepage and every important entry pagereads as mandatory | Partly met | The footer carries a reviewed date site-wide, but it is one string rather than per-page, and GIGW asks for it on every important entry page. |
| 5.1.6 | Downloadable material labelled with title, instructions, file format and file sizereads as mandatory | Untested | Not audited across the build. Applies to the training deck and any CSV this app offers. |
| 5.1.7 | Each circular, form, scheme and service carries title, purpose, procedure and validityreads as mandatory | Partly met | Title and purpose are carried on every one of the 160 catalogue entries. Validity is the missing field, and it is the same field that would unlock 5.1.8. |
| 5.1.9 | "About us" section with a mechanism to keep it currentreads as mandatory | Met | /about. |
| 5.1.10 | "Contact us" page linked from the homepage and all relevant placesreads as mandatory | Partly met | /contact exists and sits in the primary navigation. It names no functionaries, deliberately: inventing office-holders for a prototype would be the impersonation this build spends its pages avoiding. |
| 5.1.11 | Feedback collected through online forms, with a mechanism for timely responsereads as mandatory | Partly met | Folded into /contact. GIGW’s own minimum-content list names a Feedback link separately from Contact us, so a shared page is a partial answer at best. |
| 5.1.12 | Prominent link to the National Portal (india.gov.in), opening in a new browser windowreads as mandatory | Not met | There is no prominent homepage link. Note the genuine conflict: GIGW requires the linked page to open in a new window, and this build’s outward-link component is written so that it cannot open new tabs — because an unexpected new tab is a documented accessibility problem. Two guidelines pull opposite ways here and the tension is real. |
| 5.1.13 | Multi-browser and Hindi/regional font testing, Unicode, no loss of layoutreads as mandatory | Partly met | Hindi strings are Unicode throughout and the switcher works. Cross-browser testing has not been run. |
| 5.1.14 | Help section, linked from all pages, in a consistent locationreads as mandatory | Not met | There is no Help route. /learning is guidance content, which is a different thing from portal Help, and saying otherwise would be the kind of rounding-up this table exists to avoid. |
| 5.1.15 | CSS-controlled layout and responsive design across screen sizesreads as mandatory | Met | Measured at 375px: no horizontal overflow anywhere on the front page. |
| 5.1.16 | Readable with stylesheets disabledreads as mandatory | Untested | Not checked. It is a five-minute test and it has not been done, which is why this says untested rather than met. |
| 5.1.17 | Page title, lang attribute, and description metadata on every pagereads as mandatory | Met | One title and description per route in a single registry, asserted by a test that fails the build on a duplicate title or on a page whose served HTML does not carry its registered title. |
| 5.1.18 | Minimum content set on the homepage and on subsequent pagesreads as mandatory | Partly met | Of the ten homepage items GIGW lists: organisation name, about, module links, service links, contact, search, sitemap and terms are present; the emblem is refused; a separate Feedback link and a National Portal link are absent. |
| 5.1.19 | Data tables carry proper markup and tagsreads as mandatory | Untested | Not audited. The tables written since this table existed use scope on every header cell, but nobody has walked the older ones — the fee schedule, the obligations list and the catalogue — to confirm that headers are marked up as headers rather than styled to look like them. That walk is the check that would settle this row. |
| 5.1.20 | Pages print correctly on A4reads as mandatory | Untested | There is a print stylesheet for the learning deck. Whether every page survives A4 has not been checked. |
| 5.1.21 | Domain is nic.in or gov.inreads as mandatory | Refused | Refused. A gov.in domain is issued to a government body; a prototype that is not one must not sit on it, and could not obtain it. This build is served from a workers.dev subdomain precisely so that no visitor can mistake it for the real portal. |
| 5.1.22 | API integration with DigiLocker, MyGov, Aadhaar, India Portal and similar platformsreads as mandatory | Partly met | A DigiLocker authorize → consent → documents → revoke flow is implemented end to end and is clearly badged as simulated. Real integration needs credentials issued to a government body. |
| 5.1.23 | Consistent user experience and visual identity across the organisation’s propertiesreads as mandatory | Met | One shell component and one documented CSS cascade across all 50 routes. |
| 5.1.24 | Two-way integration with popular social media — the Developer action says "two-way"reads as mandatory | Partly met | The WhatsApp channel is the two-way surface. GIGW’s stated benefit is explicit that social platforms are used to "even provide services", which is what this channel does rather than broadcasting posts. No sender number is provisioned, so it is partial and not met. |
| 5.1.25 | Language free of spelling and grammatical errorsreads as mandatory | Partly met | A sweep runs over every rendered page for a specific class of text corruption. That is not the same as a proofread, so this is not claimed as met. |
| 5.2 | WCAG 2.1 Level AA across roughly fifty accessibility guidelinesreads as mandatory | Partly met | Strong on the visible controls. A full Level AA audit and assistive-technology testing have not been run, and /accessibility says so. |
| 5.2 (WCAG 2.4.1) | Bypass blocks — a link at the top of each page to the main contentreads as mandatory | Met | Present, and it was broken on mobile until 28 August 2026: a specificity conflict meant the reveal-on-focus rule lost to the hide rule below 760px, so the link was a 23x1px ghost on a phone. Found by measurement, not by reading. |
| 5.2 (WCAG 1.4.4) | Text resizable to 200% without loss of content or functionreads as mandatory | Met | The A− / A / A+ controls in the utility bar. |
| 5.2 (WCAG 1.4.3) | High contrast mode availablereads as mandatory | Met | Contrast toggle in the utility bar. |
| 5.2.31 (WCAG 2.4.5) | Multiple ways to locate a page — search AND a sitemap or table of contentsreads as mandatory | Met | Search is present in the masthead on every page, and /sitemap provides a human-readable route directory generated from the same page registry that produces /sitemap.xml. |
| 5.4.3 | A Web Information Manager appointed, at Joint Secretary level, approving all policiesreads as mandatory | Refused | Refused. A Web Information Manager is a named government officer. Printing a name in that slot for a prototype would fabricate an office-holder, which is worse than leaving the slot empty. Note also that the widely-used term "Nodal Officer" is not GIGW terminology — the manual says Web Information Manager throughout. |
| 5.4.7 | No broken links; checked regularlyreads as mandatory | Met | 629 distinct internal links are resolved on every test run, and a dead one fails the build. |
| 5.3 | Hosting within the geographical boundaries of Indiareads as mandatory | Not met | Served from Cloudflare’s global edge. Disclosed rather than obscured: it is a real constraint of a prototype and a real gap against the guideline, and a production deployment would have to move. |
Four things GIGW 3.0 does not require
Each of these is widely believed to be a GIGW mandate and is not. They are listed because asserting any of them would be a factual error, and because a page about a standard should also correct the folklore that has grown around it.
- A visitor counter is required
- The string "visitor counter" occurs zero times in GIGW 3.0. It is a convention, and a minority one — absent from india.gov.in, mygov.in, the income tax portal, the GST portal and DigiLocker.
- A "Nodal Officer" must be named
- The phrase occurs zero times. The role GIGW defines is the Web Information Manager, at Joint Secretary level.
- GIGW 3.0 contains 88 mandatory checkpoints
- Widely repeated by compliance vendors and not found in the manual. Do not cite it. The manual’s own conformity instrument is Annexure II, which maps each Quality guideline to a risk code.
- Government sites must use a saffron, white and green palette
- Neither "colour palette" nor "colour scheme" appears in GIGW 3.0. The official UX4G Design System 3.0 ships violet and amber; green survives only as a success state. The tricolour palette is folklore, not compliance.
Source, and how it was read
The guideline text behind this table was taken from the GIGW 3.0 manual itself, downloaded and text-extracted on 2026-08-28, rather than from any summary of it — which matters, because the summaries are where the four myths above come from. Most .gov.in hosts refuse an automated request, so pages were retrieved with a browser user agent.
Guidelines for Indian Government Websites and Apps (GIGW) 3.0 · STQC — Certified Quality Website (CQW)
This is a self-assessment by the people who wrote the code, which is the weakest kind of conformance claim there is. It is not an STQC assessment, no STQC assessment has been sought, and none of the 12 rows marked met has been verified by anyone outside this project. The 4 untested rows each name the check that would settle them.