PM wants improved work culture and work environment in Government Offices
THE Cabinet Secretary has written to all the Secretaries about the Prime Minister's stress on improved work culture and work environment including hygiene and cleanliness of the workspace. He wants the Secretaries to undertake the following on an urgent basis:-
1. In each Government building, workspace should be cleared and spruced up. Passages and stairs should be cleaned up to make it unobstructed and no office material/ almirah etc. should be found in these spaces. Inside the rooms too, the files/papers etc. should be neatly stacked so that a positive work environment is created.
2. Every Department should identify and repeal at least 10 rules or processes, and even archaic Acts, that are redundant and would not lead to any loss of efficiency.
3. Every Department should identify forms that are in vogue and shorten them, where possible, to one page only. (Seeking of unnecessary or irrelevant information should be discouraged).
4. Every Department should encourage use of ICT in submission of information and eventually universalize it.
5. Decision making layers should be reduced, to a maximum of four layers.
6. Files and papers should be weeded out in accordance with the rules of record keeping including digitization, wherever necessary. This exercise should be completed within 3-4 weeks.
7. Collaborative decision making and frequent consultation between departments must be done. Where issues remain unresolved, Cabinet Secretariat/PMO should be apprised for resolution.
8. Effective and timely resolution of public grievances must be ensured and monitored by the Secretaries of the Departments concerned.
9. Each Department should workout modalities of fulfilling promises made to the people.
10. Entire Department should work as a team with every level should be encouraged to provide inputs and value addition in the exercise.
We don't know yet what the Revenue Department has done with regard to the PM's directions.
Some years ago I had accompanied a US based NRI to the North Block. Right outside the CBDT Chairman's office were dumped old unusable furniture. I told my American friend that the man who sits in that office facing the dumped furniture is the equivalent of their dreaded IRS Chief!
Please also see Junk Furniture in Government offices - why not dispose them? in DDT 1211 - 08.10.2009