In order to rationalize public policy, The Indian government has embarked on a journey to build the capacity of the workforce, By establishing a specialized committee and an electronic platform that allows each government entity to determine its priorities and needs and design trainings based on them.
Government entities operate under intertwined and complex internal and external variables, This dictates that they work to adapt to the event and formulate new administrative concepts to keep pace with the times and develop government performance, which represents the total outcome of employee performance.
In India, The government serves the world’s second largest population through 60 ministries with 93 departments and 2,600 organizations with more than 3 million employees. Only 10% of them receive regular training, In the absence of an effective framework for training everyone. In fact, civil servants are generally unskilled, Especially those related to modern technology, which has become an essential part of the work of governments around the world, Most employees at the upper hierarchy receive training every 5 or even 10 years. What loses its usefulness.
In the third quarter of 2020, In an effort to change the way government institutions build the capacity of their staff, The Federal Cabinet launched the National Program for Capacity Building of Civil Services, The following year, he established the Capacity Building Committee to reimagine the service relationship between the government and citizens.
The committee will work with 93 central government bodies and more than 800 training institutions across India to train central government staff. It will undertake a range of tasks, such as coordinating with government departments, organizations and entities, to make capacity-building a unified and coherent process. Prepare annual human resources reports that assess the quality of civil services and the extent of achievement in the capacity-building effort. and then provide information to personnel management and training for parliamentary oversight purposes and determine compliance with the standards of the Comptroller and Auditor General; It is the Indian body responsible for reviewing all receipts and expenditures from the central and state governments. Besides strengthening governance, The Committee will assist the General Human Resources Council of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers in designing annual capacity-building plans. It will come up with recommendations setting out the standards and methodologies for these processes.
It can be said that the committee chose a different approach to capacity building, It found that the skills and experience given to civil servants should not be refuted in a rigid form from the most important to the least important, Rather, it should be subject to change and modification according to the needs of each ministry after it decides its priorities and objectives, It defines the competencies it possesses, and most importantly, Those that it needs to reach its goals. Accordingly, The committee will advise on capacity building planning and development or procurement of training programmes according to 3 main criteria, Foremost among them are national priorities, Civil servants should be aware of these priorities and prepared to work towards them. Then Adopting a citizen-centered approach comes and, finally, How efficient employees are in dealing with technology.
To measure the performance of ministries in accordance with these criteria, The Committee examines capacity building at 3 levels, The first of these is individual, It determines the knowledge, skills and behaviors that employees must acquire, And the second is my organizations, The Committee monitors rules and procedures that may hinder the provision of the service, and finally, Comes the institutional level, and here, The Committee is exploring ways to create an environment that allows staff to develop their capabilities and improve their performance.
To simplify it, The Committee shall work to find the point where supply meets demand, Adopt a clear understanding of training needs, It then communicates with the more than 750 local training institutions, which are spread across the country, To come up with high-quality training content. Finally, Organizes the World Civil Service Congress to share its findings.
The Committee also established the “Integrated Online Training Platform”, Which stores all training programs and offers them within flexible educational hours that take into account the requirements of work and life, It shall allow each ministry or institution to contribute its training for the benefit of other entities, As a railway management experience that will provide training to more than 100,000 employees on the “citizen-centric approach”, It will share it with the Postal Corporation, which employs the same number of employees and needs to provide them with expertise in dealing directly with citizens.
The platform will divide the trainings according to job categories, It will establish more stable training models for high-level staff and provide them with monitoring and planning programmes. It will also provide the option of self-learning for some training courses according to their content and type, While others will remain personal, Such as exercises that focus on behavior modification.
The committee is also working on developing an evaluation model for the results of the training immediately after its completion. Then after 6 months, To measure real-world changes in service delivery to citizens. Each ministry will have to develop methods to test the competencies it needs.
Measured by the volume of exercises needed, A deep understanding of the needs is required, otherwise, All these efforts will be in vain. This is perhaps the most important challenge facing the Committee. Securing funding will also be a serious challenge that requires finding donors and establishing close partnerships with public and private actors. The authorities hope that these efforts will lead to improved services, quality of life and economic development through a more effective and reliable government.
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