Bureaucrats who don’t perform must make way for outsiders, says admn reforms panel

A draft report by ARC suggests that targets of each department be fixed and in the process, work expectation from each civil servant be spelt out in a written agreement with the departmental minister. Instead of the input-centric performance measure — where achievements are function of money spent and manpower deployed for a scheme or a project — the ARC wants a shift to assessment based on quantifiable output targets.

These covenants with promise to perform would be placed in the public domain to ensure that there is complete transparency in what each individual bureaucrat has agreed to achieve during a particular time period. Using these targets, a feedback on service delivery would be obtained from the beneficiaries to assess their effectiveness, proposes the ARC. And those who do not frequently come up to the expectations would be shown the door.

“At present, hardly any civil servant gets thrown out on grounds of incompetence and failure to deliver. It is necessary that all civil servants should undergo a rigorous assessment of performance at least once in their career, at the 20 years’ service mark. On the basis of such assessment, the civil servants who have not performed must be retired compulsorily using provisions which already exist but are not adequately used,” recommends the ARC headed by Veerappa Moily.

This selection of the “very best of society for the most challenging assignments” would be handled by “an independent, suitably empowered authority outside the government”. Besides selection, this authority would fix the terms and conditions of employment, tenure, performance requirement and termination as well as spell out their development, mobility, promotion and tenure.

The pay for the SES would be retained at present...