We, in the government, tend to be highly reactive in our work. We must be proactive if we have to achieve results. We really do not get the time to apply ourselves to setting objectives for ourselves. If, at the beginning of the year, we set goals and those below us agree with the goals, then we are moving towards "something." There is a sense of direction and purpose.
But setting goals in government can be tricky affair especially where it is difficult to quantify them…
It's not cast in stone. At a particular point there may be a crisis that hits you. Then you will have to change course. Now, this mechanism has been built into the performance management system. We can change course and change goals. At the end of the year, whatever you set for yourself should be physically quantifiable. At the end of the year you know that this is the result. Initially there will be difficulties. You will find some officers set high goals for themselves but will not be able to achieve these.
Can you give any instances?
I don't think there are any particular examples. We have just started this exercise and we have only done one quarter. The results for the evaluation done in 2010-11 will be released anytime soon (62 ministries). What we have found is that sometimes the goals themselves are limited, in which case the achievement can be very high. Therefore what we have done is we have brought in experts, academics and retired officers so that their inputs come in during the goal setting exercise. The overall idea is that we start this exercise of putting goals for ourselves (senior officers) and also for subordinate officers.
How do you distinguish between goals and the vision for a ministry?
A vision is a charter. There are two things that one has to understand: the first is setting annual goals. We are also working on a five-year strategy that will set the overall goals to be achieved over the next five years. And this is not a Planning Commission exercise. Also there are different sectors in the government.
It is easy to have targets in some ministries and not so in others. Can you throw more light on this matter?
Last year, we took about 62 ministries. And this year, the number could be 75-80. If it is the Finance Ministry or Home Ministry, these are very large ministries to have one set of goals. They have to be broken up into separate departments.
These ministries are currently not part of the performance exercise. But when they join, what parameters will they adopt?
We are going phase by phase. Each ministry will have to set its own goals. What health sets will not be the same for, say, tourism.
What about Defence? The cabinet secretariat, PMO…
Defence would also have to set its goals. You can have goals such as "we will strengthen our defence apparatus by a certain level." However, they may not make these goals available to the public. Setting goals for themselves would help them move forward. We will start this exercise for the Cabinet secretariat this year. But we cannot ask the PMO. For any secret organisation, they will have to do it themselves.
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Basically, this exercise is an instrument for them to use. The ministries that have participated actively seem to be very happy with this system. That said, now that a year has passed, we need to talk to them (ministries) and get feedback. It is not only the Central government; some states are coming forward and are taking interest in this system. States like Maharashtra, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh have shown interest. Even our neighbours Sri Lanka and Bhutan have shown interest.
Our existing system of government is structured in a particular manner and has grown like this over the years. Given this, how can a ministry like sports have targets when some of the most crucial activities don't come under it (like IOA and even CWG)?
Many things don't come under you. But then you are supposed to be the catalytic force that will make things happen. Otherwise there's no raison d'être for the ministry itself. If there is no objective, then there is no reason for a ministry. If a ministry says "we are not able to identify our objectives," it means that they have not really applied themselves to the task of where they want to go. My experience has been that initially some people have reservations but when they really get to writing it down, it comes naturally.
A bureaucrat who moves from one department to another is concerned about his annual confidential report (ACR) as this is what largely determines his promotion. Is the ACR system of assessment independent of this new performance system?
Performance rating has started very recently. But the point you make has relevance: what is the system of reward and punishment? This is the next stage we are working on. If you recall, we did the same thing for public sector undertakings about 15 to 20 years ago. The reward system is in the pay scales and in higher powers for the boards of directors. This has now got established. Like this, we would have to build in a system for performance appraisal also. The 6th pay commission has already provided for a performance-related incentive system. What we are looking at is a system where you are able save money through achievement of an objective. A portion of the money saved like this will be distributed in the ministry. This is the performance-related incentive system that we are working on. The Finance Ministry has to agree and then this proposal has to go to cabinet.
But won't ministries start scaling down goals in order to avail incentives? Besides, ministries such as Rural Development have very high allocations; by achieving their goals they will have more funds available for distribution in the ministry.
Targets have to be set given the resources you have. The thinking is: what is the optimum you can achieve given the resources you have? How do you improve yourself? As for some ministries having a larger corpus, there could be variations that we need to work out. Ministries with larger budgets will have larger manpower.
Will the system of ACRs of individual bureaucrats become redundant, say, five years down the line?
ACRs are something that we need to work on. The entire format will have to undergo changes, but they (performance management) will not become redundant. This is not an exercise that is going to end in five years. It's an ongoing exercise. It will be one of the elements in the assessment of officers.
No official stays permanently in one department. Will the outstanding performance of a department be reflected in the ACR of an official who has moved on? And, who sets the targets? Won't the minister concerned also be involved?
About officials moving—this happens; the concerned person may be due to retire. (But) This is not an exercise that is confined to an individual. It's the department as a whole (along with the minister) that takes part in this exercise. A good performance by the department in which the official is working will be reflected in the ACR. Also, variations in the performance of the department will show up during a review. The system we are trying out is an adjunct to the original ACR system, where an officer himself indicates his achievements, which are then evaluated by his superiors. Perhaps at a certain time this system can evolve into a more effective assessment system. We are far from that. Goal setting: this has to be done by the PM and the department minister.
But who monitors the exercise? Will there be a report card that comes out at the end that the PM looks at?
Effectively, the monitoring has to be done by the individual ministries. But there is a high-level committee under the cabinet secretary that also monitors and looks at setting new parameters. What we are trying is to introduce a mechanism similar to the one introduced in PSUs more than a decade back and has paid dividends. But this is not an exercise where there will be a report card. They (officials) are not schoolchildren—this is not like the schoolmaster thing. It is not as though we are going to give a test, where we lay down the objectives.
Supposing there is non-performance what will be done? As in corporates, will increments be reduced?
At the outset, we look at the reasons for "non-performance". Many times we change the parameters. We know the goals that a particular department set out to achieve but for a particular reason could not—and that is quite understandable. As for comparisons with corporates for non-performance, it is too premature to say anything; these are early stages. Everybody says that the government needs to be accountable and has to perform. We can't sit back thinking that this (exercise) is too cumbersome. If we think that way; we will be failing in our duty of taking the first step.
| ALSO IN THIS STORY |
KRAS FOR GOVERNMENT The ministerial performance appraisal system is a step in the right direction. But it will need a lot of finetuning to succeed. |
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