New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government is set to carry out major restructuring of central government services such as the IAS, IPS and IFS. For this, it has asked all ministries to prepare detailed profiles of the services and submit them to the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT).
The Modi government wants to overhaul the existing system to synchronise it with contemporary governance requirements, and is attempting to do so by April 2020.
According to an office memorandum dated 17 September, the DoPT has said: “In order to formulate manpower planning and policies, service profile of various services/cadres/posts in Govt. of India is required.
“In view of the above, all the ministries/departments are requested to furnish the requisite information for all the services/cadres/posts under their administrative control latest by 30.09.19 positively,” the memorandum says.
The exercise of examining the existing government posts and services is the first of its kind in at least 30 years.
“The idea is to eliminate redundant posts from the government and introduce new ones which would be in sync with the changing times,” a DoPT official said on the condition of anonymity.
The move comes weeks after the DoPT proposed rationalising the country’s civil services in its five-year vision document. As reported by ThePrint, the government had proposed reducing the number of services to ensure that the state machinery functions more harmoniously.
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Details required
As part of the profiles of all the government services, the DoPT has asked the ministries to furnish details such as introduction and background of the service (name of the service, cadre controlling authority, year of formation of service, year of last cadre review, hierarchical structure of the service, places of postings with grades), objective of the service (role of the service, responsibilities of the officers), method of recruitment, and the eligibility criteria to be recruited (educational and professional requirements, career prospects and criteria for promotion).
The department has also asked for details of the cadre structure, including details such as the method of filling up posts, designations, pay scale, number of posts in the cadre, last batch of officers promoted, total vacancies, etc.
Ministries will also need to compile details of the training received by officers at the time of recruitment, promotion, and other mid- and high-level training.
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Better utilisation of resources
The DoPT wants to specify the role of officers and services at each stage for better utilisation of the government’s resources.
“Right now, there is no explicitly-specified role of, say, a joint secretary-level officer… The government wants to re-examine the roles and clearly explain them,” the DoPT official quoted above said.
“For this, obviously, a full-fledged re-evaluation of the existing system was required, and that is what is being done.”
The re-evaluation would help in addressing the problem of vacancies, creating new posts where required, etc.
As reported earlier by ThePrint, the government is also considering the idea of splitting the DoPT into two separate departments, with one meant exclusively for the training of government servants.
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The Indian Economic Service has a cadre of about 500 officers. One does not hear anything at all about them in the media discourse. Any bright sparks, people who are making a mark. What has been their role and contribution over the last decade, which has been a difficult time for the economy. 2. We can be subjective about ourselves. However, India’s bureaucracy is consistently rated Asia’s worst by foreign observers and experts.
First thing the Govt of India can do is make EVERYTHING digital – why are they still using physical files ? Why the same old “Triplicate” culture ? Why are our beurocrats not being brought into the 21st century ???
We are talking about “modifying” the civil bureaucracy – but how can you change the people while keeping a 18th century infrastructure in place and expect 21st century results ? Even today there are literally 1000s of workers in Delhi whose only job is to take a file from one office to another !! That is what they will do for 30 years and retire with pension!
Changing the person won’t make any “improvements” – you need to change the way people work – use new tools, new approaches and rationalize redundant jobs where carrying files and washing tea cups is a “job” in the Govt ! You can’t have Govt files continuing to be maintained as if it was 1850.