Mission Karmayogi

• Dubbed the biggest bureaucratic reform initiative, the Union Cabinet 2020 approved ‘Mission Karmayogi’, a new capacity-building scheme for civil servants aimed at upgrading the post-recruitment training mechanism of the officers and employees at all levels.

• Mission Karmayogi aims to prepare Indian civil servants for the future by making them more creative, constructive, imaginative, innovative, proactive, professional, progressive, energetic, enabling, transparent and technology-enabled.
• Mission Karmayogi programme will be delivered by setting up a digital platform called iGOTKarmayogi. Empowered with specific role competencies, a civil servant will be able to ensure efficient service delivery of the highest quality standards, the government said.
• The platform will act as a launchpad for the National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building (NPCSCB), which will enable a comprehensive reform of the capacity building apparatus at the individual, institutional and process levels.
• NPCSCB will be governed by the Prime Minister’s Human Resource Council, which will also include state Chief Ministers, Union Cabinet ministers and experts. This council will approve and review civil service capacity-building programmes.
• Besides this, there will be a Cabinet Secretary Coordination Unit comprising select secretaries and cadre controlling authorities.
• Also, there will be a Capacity Building Commission, which will include experts in related fields and global professionals. This commission will prepare and monitor annual capacity-building plans and audit human resources available in the government.
• Finally, there will be a wholly-owned Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), which will govern the iGOT-Karmayogi platform. It 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-Karmayogi platform. The SPV will create and operationalise the content, market place and manage key business services of the iGOT-Karmayogi platform, 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.
• How will it be funded? 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 $50 million.
• Besides the setting up of the SPV, an appropriate monitoring and evaluation framework will also be put in place for the performance evaluation of all users of the iGOT-Karmayogi platform so as to generate a dashboard view of Key Performance Indicators.
• This exercise will “radically” improve the government’s human resource management practices and asserted it will use state-of-the-art infrastructure to augment the capacity of civil servants.
• Officers and employees in the government will get an opportunity to improve their performance under the Mission Karmayogi.

Mission Karmayogi- National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building

Context:

• The Union Cabinet has approved ‘Mission Karmayogi’ – the National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building (NPCSCB).
• It is meant to be a comprehensive post-recruitment reform of the Centre’s human resource development.
• Similar to pre-recruitment changes in the form of the National Recruitment Agency.

The objective of the Mission Karmayogi:

• It is aimed at building a future-ready civil service with the right attitude, skills and knowledge, aligned to the vision of New India.
• It aims to prepare Indian civil servants for the future by making them more creative, constructive, imaginative, proactive, innovative, progressive, professional, energetic, transparent, and technology-enabled.
• Comprehensive reform of the capacity-building apparatus at the individual, institutional and process levels for efficient public service delivery.

Details:

• 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 $50 million.

Importance of Mission Karmayogi:

• As the Indian economy grows, it will get more complex to govern; the governance capacities will have to be enhanced proportionately which this reform undertakes.
• There is a need to develop domain knowledge besides administrative capacity in the bureaucracy.
• There is a need to formalize the recruitment process and match the public service to a bureaucrat’s competence, so as to find the right person for the right job.
• The plan is to begin right at the recruitment level and then invest in building more capacity through the rest of their career.
• The reforms in the Indian bureaucracy is the need of the hour and It is a major reform undertaken in recent years to transform it.

Issues in present Bureaucratic system:

• There is a tendency in the Bureaucracy to resist the change which challenges the status quo.
• The bureaucracy too must understand the need for domain knowledge and the importance of moving away from a generalist to a specialist approach.
• In today’s world governance is getting technical with each passing day and hence it’s important that the person in authority too should have the requisite skill and experience in that particular area.
• Thus, there should be a behavioural change in the bureaucracy too and they must embrace the change as a need of the hour and not an attack on their status quo.
• Moreover, these online courses must not become another opportunity for the officers to go on sabbatical leaves.
• It must be ensured that they are actually attending the courses and participating in it so that the purpose doesn’t get defeated.

Special Purpose Vehicle:

• There will be a wholly-owned Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), which will govern the iGOT-Karmayogi platform. It 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-Karmayogi platform.
• The SPV will create and operationalise the content, market place and manage key business services of iGOT-Karmayogi platform, 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.
• 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.
• Enable adoption of modern technological tools such as digital platforms, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Data Analytics.

Way forward:

• The ultimate aim of Mission Karmayogi is to ensure “Ease of Living” for the common man, “Ease of Doing Business” and Citizen-Centricity that is reducing the gap between the government and the citizens.
• 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.
• This can only be achieved by regular and constructive involvement by the government and civil servants.