The Union Cabinet cleared major changes in the way civil services officers will be skilled and trained across the country. ‘Mission Karmayogi’ or National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building (NPCSCB), will be steered by four new bodies, and will be available for civil servants from the rank of assistant section officer to Secretary, across services.

The new entities will be a Prime Minister’s Public Human Resources Council, a Capacity Building Commission, a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) that will own and operate the digital assets and technological platform for online training, and a Coordination Unit, which will be headed by the Cabinet Secretary.

An Integrated Government Online Training (iGOT)-Karmayogi platform will be developed for the project.

Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office Jitendra Singh said “Mission Karmayogi is an endeavour to reincarnate a government servant as an ideal karmayogi to serve the nation, by enabling him to be creative, to be constructive, to be proactive, and technically empowered”.

Key Points

• Aim & Objective:
  
  • 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.
  • Mission Karmayogi will shift the focus from rule-specific to role-specific, and training programmes will be available to all civil servants across services and ranks
    
• Reason for Mission:
  
  • At present bureaucracy is facing challenges like- Rule orientation, political interference, inefficiency with promotions, and generalist and specialist conflict.
  • To change the status quo of civil services and bring about the long pending civil services reforms.
  • The capacity of Civil Services plays a vital role in rendering a wide variety of services, implementing welfare programs and performing core governance functions.
• Features of the scheme:
  
  • Tech-Aided: The capacity building will be delivered through iGOT Karmayogi digital platform, with content drawn from global best practices.
    
    • The platform will act as a launchpad for the National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building (NPCSCB).
  • Coverage: The scheme will cover 46 lakh central government employees, at all levels, and involve an outlay of Rs. 510 crores over a five-year period.
  • Shift from Rules to Roles: The programme will support a transition from “rules-based to roles-based” Human Resource Management (HRM) so that work allocations can be done by matching an official’s competencies to the requirements of the post.
    
    • Apart from domain knowledge training, the scheme will focus on “functional and behavioural competencies” as well, and also includes a monitoring framework for performance evaluations.
  • Integrated Initiative: Eventually, service matters such as confirmation after probation period, deployment, work assignments and notification of vacancies will all be integrated into the proposed framework.
• Governance Structure:
  
  • Human Resource Council: 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.
  • Cabinet Secretary Coordination Unit: There will be a Cabinet Secretary Coordination Unit comprising select secretaries and cadre controlling authorities.
  • Capacity Building Commission: 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.
  • Special Purpose Vehicle: 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 the iGOT-Karmayogi platform.
    • The SPV will create and operationalize 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.
  • Monitoring and Evaluation Framework: An appropriate monitoring and evaluation framework will also be put in place for performance evaluation of all users of the iGOT-Karmayogi platform so as to generate a dashboard view of Key Performance Indicators.
• To conclude, 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. This can only be achieved by regular and constructive involvement by the government and civil servants.