Comprehensive reform of the capacity building apparatus at individual, institutional and process levels for efficient public service delivery

PM led HR Council to approve and monitor Civil Service Capacity Building Plans

Capacity Building Commission to harmonize training standards, create shared faculty and resources, and have supervisory role over all Central Training Institutions

Wholly owned SPV to own and operate the online learning platform and facilitate world-class learning content market-place.

The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi has approved launching of a National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building (NPCSCB)with the following institutional framework:-

(i) Prime Minister’s Public Human Resources (HR) Council,

(ii) Capacity Building Commission.

(iii) Special Purpose Vehicle for owning and operating the digital assets and the technological platform for online training,

(iv) Coordination Unit headed by the Cabinet Secretary.

Salient Features

NPCSCB has been carefully designed to lay the foundations for capacity building for Civil Servants so that they remain entrenched in Indian Culture and sensibilities and remain connected, with their roots, while they learn from the best institutions and practices across the world. The Programme will be delivered by setting up an Integrated Government Online Training-iGOT Karmayogi Platform. The core guiding principles of the Programme will be:

• Supporting Transition from ‘Rules based’ to ‘Roles based’ HR Management.Aligning work allocation of civil servants by matching their competencies to the requirements of the post.
• To emphasize on ‘on-site learning’ to complement the ‘off-site’ learning,
• To create an ecosystem of shared training infrastructure including that of learning materials, institutions and personnel
• To calibrate all Civil Service positions to a Framework of Roles, Activities and Competencies (FRACs) approach and to create and deliver learning content relevant to the identified FRACs in every Government entity
• To make available to all civil servants, an opportunity to continuously build and strengthen their Behavioral, Functional and Domain Competencies in their self-driven and mandated learning paths.
• To enable all the Central Ministries and Departments and their Organizations to directly invest their resources towards co-creation and sharing the collaborative and common ecosystem of learning through an annual financial subscription for every employee,
• To encourage and partner with the best-in-class learning content creators including public training institutions, universities, start-tips and individual experts,
• To undertake data analytics in respect of data emit provided by iGOT- Karmayogi pertaining to various aspects of capacity building, content creation, user feedback and mapping of competencies and identify areas for policy reforms.

Objectives

It is also proposed to set up a Capacity Building Commission, with a view to ensure a uniform approach in managing and regulating the capacity building ecosystem on collaborative and co-sharing basis.

The role of Commission will be as under-

• To assist the PM Public Human Resources Council in approving the Annual Capacity Building Plans.
• To exercise functional supervision over all Central Training Institutions dealing with civil services capacity building.
• To create shared learning resources, including internal and external faculty and resource centers.
• To coordinate and supervise the implementation of the Capacity Building Plans with the stakeholder Departments.
• To make recommendations on standardization of training and capacity building, pedagogy and methodology
• To set norms for common mid-career training programs across all civil services.
• To suggest policy interventions required in the areas of HR Management and Capacity Building to the Government.

iGOT-Karmayogi platform brings the scale and state-of-the-art infrastructure to augment the capacities of over two crore officials in India. The platform is expected to evolve into a vibrant and world-class market place for content where carefully curated and vetted digital e-learning material will be made available. Besides capacity building, service matters like confirmation after probation period, deployment, work assignment and notification of vacancies etc. would eventually be integrated with the proposed competency framework.

Mission Karmayogi aims to prepare the Indian Civil Servant for the future by making him more creative, constructive, imaginative, innovative, proactive, professional, progressive, energetic, enabling, transparent and technology-enabled. Empowered with specific role-competencies, the civil servant will be able to ensure efficient service delivery of the highest quality standards.

Financial implications

To cover around 46 lakh Central employees, a sum of Rs.510.86 crore will be spent over a period of 5 years from 2020-21 to 2024-25. The expenditure is partly funded by multilateral assistance to the tune of USD 50 million. A wholly owned Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) for NPCSCB will be set up under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013. The SPV will be a “not-for-profit” company and will own and manage iGOT-Karmayogiplatform. The SPV will create and operationalize the content, market place and manage key business services ofiGOT-Karmayogiplatform, relating to content validation, independent proctored assessments and telemetry data availability. The SPV will own all Intellectual Property Rights on behalf of the Government of India. An appropriate monitoring and evaluation framework will also be put in place for performance evaluation of all users of the iGOT-Karmayogiplatform so as to generate a dashboard view of Key Performance Indicators.

Background

Capacity of Civil Services plays a vital role in rendering a wide variety of services, implementing welfare programs and performing core governance functions. A transformational change in Civil Service Capacity is proposed to be affectedby organically linking the transformation of work culture, strengthening public institutions and adopting modern technology to build civil service capacity with the overall aim of ensuring efficient delivery of services to citizens.

A Public Human Resources Council comprising of select Union Ministers, Chief Ministers, eminent public HR practitioners, thinkers, global thought leaders and Public Service functionaries under the Chairmanship of Hon’ble Prime Minister will serve as the apex body for providing strategic direction to the task of Civil Services Reform and capacity building.

Source: PIB

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Latest Central Government Employees News

Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions
360 Degree evaluation of Civil Servants

06 FEB 2020

A system of 360 degree appraisal involving a Multi-Source Feedback from various stakeholders including from seniors, peers and juniors etc. has been introduced in the process of empanelment of officers for holding senior level positions in the Government of India. Apart from Multi-Source Feedback, the empanelment process takes into account the overall service record, vigilance status and suitability of the officers concerned.

The candidates who have been appointed as Joint Secretary under lateral recruitment policy have signed a Contract Agreement with Government. As per this Agreement, the performance of Joint Secretary appointed under lateral recruitment policy will be evaluated annually.

This information was provided by the Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Development of North-Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, DrJitendra Singh in written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha today.

PIB

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Policy for Removal of Non-Performing Civil Servants

The provisions under Fundamental Rules (FR) 56(j), Rule 48 of Central Civil Services (CCS) (Pension) Rule, 1972 and Rule, 16(3) (Amended) of All India Services (Death-cum-Retirement Benefits) [AIS (DCRB)] Rules, 1958 have laid down the policy of periodic review and premature retirement of non-performing Government servants.

Up to January, 2018, a total of 21,195 Group ‘A’ and 47,039 Group ‘B’ officers have been reviewed, out of which provisions of FR 56(j) and relevant rules were invoked/recommended against 83 Group ‘A’ and 128 Group ‘B’ officers, including 15 officers of All India Services.

This was stated by the Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr. Jitendra Singh, in written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha today.

Source: PIB

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The seventh Pay Commission’s draft report to determine the new salary structure for the 5.5 million civil servants in the central government has got riddled with several dissent notes. The notes, mainly about bringing in parity between the top-ranked Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and the specialised central services, argue that it will widen the talent base available to the government to deliver increasingly complex services to a demanding population.

But the dissensions could exacerbate differences at the top of the bureaucracy in the Government of India, already reeling from the impact of pay-related problems for the retired armed forces personnel who have demanded ‘one rank one pension’.

“There is a strong case for considering talent in the government rather than being confined to choices within some cadres,” former expenditure secretary Dhirendra Swarup told Business Standard. Swarup is one of the few non-IAS officers who became secretaries in the government, under former finance minister Jaswant Singh.

The notes are also a first for the Pay Commissions, set up every 10 years by the central government to revise the pay and allowances of central government employees. In the fifth Pay Commission, economist Suresh Tendulkar had put in a dissent note but it was on a macro theme suggesting a pruning of the bureaucracy and relating wages to performance.

But this time the notes reflect the sharp differences that have come up among the different cadres of government services about their pay and promotion avenues. There is a larger issue here. All the services taken together make up fewer than 150,000 people within the central government tasked with a mammoth level of administrative responsibility for a country of 1.3 billion people. So, frustrations among them could have far-reaching repercussions.
These men and women operate in a rigidly differentiated world through an appointment system that places them in cadres. The cadres almost mirror the caste differences in the larger society. The top-most cadres are the all-India services that include the IAS, Indian Police Service and Indian Forest Service. Of them, the IAS are the most numerous, at 4,572 according to the Civil Survey Report of 2010, written by former cabinet secretary, K M Chandrasekhar.

Below them are about 45 cadres clubbed as central civil services, which include the IFS, IA&AS and IRS.

The impact of this pecking order came out in the open recently in the list of empanelled officers for the post of 60 additional secretaries. These posts rank just one notch below that of the secretaries, who function as heads of department or ministries in the government. Of those empanelled, only three (railways, income tax and audit & accounts services) were from the non-all India services. Swarup said the numbers were even lower than those until the 1990s, when there were at least five non-IAS officers in the central government ministries. At joint secretary and senior levels, positions up to those of secretaries (senior administrative grade) in central ministries, the share of other services is minuscule when compared with IAS. Yet, this is where policies are shaped.

At the heart of the difference is a two-year increment offered to IAS officers when they join vis-a-vis other cadres. Since seniority within the government is decided on pay scale, the higher start assures these officers of a higher position at each grade. But as the IRS officers and others in their representations have pointed out, this makes it impossible for them to compete for additional secretary and secretary posts in the ministries.

But Chandrasekhar counters it saying officers from most non-IAS services have enough options to be promoted within their services. “There is need for both specialists and generalists in the civil services. The Indian government is a massive structure that demands many different skill sets”.

To correct some of the problems, the 2010 report had suggested setting up of a Central Civil Services Authority for officers from all the services after they completed 13 years of service. Each officer would get to choose an area of specialisation for the rest of their career. It has not been implemented so far.

The report of the Pay Commission, headed by Ashok Kumar Mathur, a former judge of the Supreme Court, was held up due to Bihar Assembly polls. The commission was given a four-month extension in August. Besides Mathur, the others in the commission are Vivek Rae (IAS) as full-time member, besides part-time members Meena Agarwal (Indian Railway Accounts Service) and Rathin Roy, director, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP). The commission is attempting to paper over some of the differences before the report goes to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. The commission did not respond to requests for an interaction on the contents of the report.

The differences have become so sharp that social media platforms like WhatsApp have been flooded with often derogatory comments from opposing cadres about each other, a first of sorts. But both Swarup and Chandrasekhar held that such comments might not be serious enough to test the smooth functioning of the officers from different services when they were posted together.

Source: Business Standard

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Armed forces seek pay parity with civil servants: Indian Express

Parity with civil servants, tax-free risk allowance and attractive entry-level pay, are some of the demands jointly sought by the armed forces from the seventh central pay commission (CPC). The demands form a part of a 4,000-page Joint Service Memorandum (JSM) submitted by the three service chiefs to the CPC this week. Interestingly, One Rank One Pension (OROP) — a demand since 1982 — has been dropped as the forces “consider it approved” as announced by the government on the floor of Parliament.

Considering “application of civilian pay structure to services despite differential cadre structure, rank structure and promotional prospects,” as the prime fault line, the JSM seeks extension of Non-Functional Upgradation (NFU) to armed forces personnel. The NFU, which has so far been applicable only to IAS officers and other class A services, entitles them to the pay scale of the highest promoted officer of their respective courses. “Thus, even if an officer is not promoted, he gets the pay of a higher grade by virtue of another officer of his batch reaching higher rank. The same is applicable to IPS, IFS and other such services. We have asked for extension of NFU to the armed forces,” an Army official said.

While civil servants retire at 60, the retirement age of officers of the armed forces can vary with their rank. “Also, a major general equivalent picks up the rank after 32 years of service whereas a joint secretary reaches the pay scale in 18 years of service. We have sought “concordance of status” based on length of service and not rank,” the official said.

Besides tax exemption from risk pay the recommendations also include an “edge in entry level pay to improve attractiveness of defence services” and “incentives for selection grade ranks.

Headed by justice A K Mathur CPC will be submitting its recommendations to the government by January 2016.

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