Administrative Reforms in India

Administrative reforms are a continuous process and the Government follow the maxim “Minimum Government - Maximum Governance”. Government from time to time brings administrative reforms, to encourage greater efficiency, transparent and corruption-free governance, accountability and reduce scope for discretion.

Some of the major steps are as follows:

• Launch of “Mission Karmayogi”- National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building (NPCSCB), a new national architecture for civil services capacity building has been launched. It is a comprehensive reform of the capacity-building apparatus at individual, institutional and process levels for efficient public service delivery;
• e-Samiksha- A real-time online system for monitoring and follow-up action on the decisions taken by the Government at the Apex level in respect of the implementation of important Government programmes/projects;
• e-Office Mission Mode Project (MMP) has been strengthened for enabling Ministries/ Departments to switchover to paperless office and efficient decision making;
• Self-certification of documents for appointments- From June 2016, recruiting agencies to issue provisional appointment letters based on the submission of self-certified documents by the candidates;
• Discontinuation of interview in the recruitment of junior level posts- From January 2016, the interview has been dispensed with for recruitment to all Group ‘C’, Group ‘B’ (Non-Gazetted posts) and other equivalent posts in all Government of India Ministries/ Departments/ Attached Offices/ Subordinate Offices/ Autonomous Bodies/ Public Sector Undertakings to curb malpractices and for bringing objectivity to the selection process;
• Appointment at senior positions- Multi-source feedback for empanelment for the posts of Joint Secretary and above has been introduced;
• Citizen Charters-Government has mandated Citizen Charters for all Ministries/Departments which are updated and reviewed on a regular basis. The Citizen Charters of Central Government Departments are available at the respective web-sites of Ministries/Departments and https://goicharters.nic.in/public/website/home;
• Intensive review for weeding out inefficient and Officers of doubtful integrity by premature retirement;
• Use of Integrated Government Online Training Programme for online module based training;
• Good Governance Index 2019- was launched, which assesses the Status of Governance and impact of various interventions taken up by the State Government and Union Territories (UTs). The objectives of GGI are to provide quantifiable data to compare the state of governance in all States and UTs, enable States and UTs to formulate and implement suitable strategies for improving governance and shift to result-oriented approaches and administration;
• Comprehensive restructuring of the Scheme for ‘Prime Minister’s Awards for Excellence in Public Administration’ in 2014 and thereafter in 2020;
• To promote e-Governance in a holistic manner, various policy initiatives and projects have been undertaken to develop core and support infrastructure;
• National Conference on e-Governance - provides a platform for government to engage with experts, intellectuals from industry and academic institutions to exchange experiences relating to e-Governance initiatives;
• National e-Governance Service Delivery Assessment - aims at assessing the States, UTs and Central Ministries on the efficiency of e-Governance service delivery;
• Centralized Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS)-The Government is undertaking CPGRAMS reforms in the top grievance receiving Ministries/ Departments by enabling questionnaire guided registration process and providing for automatic forwarding of grievances to field level functionaries thereby reducing the redress time;
• Increasing efficiency in decision making in Central Secretariat by reducing the channel of submission to 4, adoption of e-Office version 7.0, digitization of central registration units, greater delegation of virtual private networks under the Central Secretariat Manual of Office Procedure 2019, and adoption of desk officer system.