New Delhi, March 6 -- We all remember our school days when the annual report card was a much-awaited event and we used to approach the appointed day with much trepidation and expectation. The report card had the potential of giving you great joy and uplifting your spirits sky high or putting you down in the dumps. Those who put in years of hard labour throughout their academic career and qualified for the haloed civil services must have heaved a sigh of relief that they have now gone beyond the report card stage. But now they would be dismayed to find the Cabinet Secretary to the Government of India evaluating performance on a periodical basis and giving them their report cards indicating the marks that they have scored out of hundred. This is happening at the level of Union Secretaries, and one can imagine them comparing their marks with each other just like in the childhood days.
From what I gathered from newspapers, it appears that the Cabinet Secretariat has issued administrative scorecards to Secretaries to the Central Government showing the percentage of marks obtained by them based on their individual performance as well as that of their departments. The assessment scheme is that the Secretaries and their departments would be graded on about a dozen parameters with a total of hundred marks, which include negative marks and discretionary marks to be awarded by the Cabinet Secretary. File disposal is given the highest prominence with a maximum of 20 marks. Fifteen marks are for expenditure on schemes and capital expenditure, and fifteen marks for monthly output in relation to decided parameters. Public grievance redressal carries five marks, while there are marks for Cabinet notes, litigation, timely completion of high-value projects and financial advice. It is interesting that the scorecard also carries twelve marks which would be like a penalty imposed for excessive expenditure on foreign tours or events, abnormal pendency of files at the level of Secretary, and delayed payments to micro, small and medium enterprises.
The Cabinet Secretary has five discretionary marks at his disposal which he would award for exceptional work or special contribution made. Quite obviously, the purpose of this exercise is to evolve a system which would constantly evaluate the efficiency and working of Secretaries of their departments based, as far as possible, on an objective and fair methodology. It is true that a large portion of the work being done by Union Secretaries and their team of officers is difficult to quantify and the subjective element cannot completely be ruled out. However, the logic used by the Cabinet Secretary cannot be faulted when he says that it does not mean that if something cannot be measured with perfect accuracy it should not be measured at all. He asserts that different departments face situations which are unique to them, but still a feedback mechanism is possible. In management, the principle followed is that whatever can be measured will get done. This exercise is attempting to measure performance indicators and is a welcome step. This evaluation is in addition to the monthly demi-official letter written by Secretaries to the Cabinet Secretary outlining the performance done by them during the course of the month.
The performance evaluation in government currently is done at the end of the year and is more like a post-mortem. It helps to evaluate an officer for promotion purposes but does not contribute to identifying areas of improvement during the year. Concurrent evaluation at periodic intervals is more likely to give results than a once-in-a-year evaluation. There is no denying that the job of a public servant goes far beyond achieving quantitative targets, as there are a multiplicity of objectives that she must fulfil. A large number of such parameters are subjective in nature but of great importance. An example of this would be the attitude of the civil servant towards the weaker sections of society. With a little bit of application, indicators or metrics of such social objectives can also be enumerated and evaluated. I notice that in this report card, results and outcomes are also being given some weightage, which is how it should be.
Public service delivery is dependent upon actual performance at the field level. To achieve this, the Cabinet Secretariat would have to do a deeper exercise of evaluation rather than just assess the data provided. The capacity to take initiative, creativity, problem-solving approach, innovativeness, and providing a long-term vision to the department are essential qualities on which the Secretary as a leader should be assessed. I am not so sure whether the parameters laid down provide an indication of these leadership qualities. A Secretary brings with her the experience of more than three decades of public service, and we would not like to have a system which restrains him to focus only on routine and urgent matters and not allow her to express herself fully, giving the department the benefit of her unique style of leadership. We need parameters to judge the leadership capability of a Secretary and other senior officers.
Besides, sometimes things like speed of file disposal can be misleading. An officer can clear her desk by simply raising unwanted queries or referring the file for legal or financial advice. She could also evade taking responsibility by pushing the file upwards for directions or, like a true bureaucrat, resort to the time-honoured practice of setting up committees. It is decisions that we want from our leaders and not merely the talent to navigate the process by keeping the file in endless movement. I recall a senior Secretary of mine telling me that he knew how to send a file into orbit where it would continue in a circular motion till he decided to bring it back. Effective governance requires prompt decision-making, a visionary approach, coordination, and the ability to develop a team which can give results. Another strong quality that a leader must possess is the ability to dismantle red tape and bring in a culture of deregulation and decentralisation. All this calls for a more elaborate and scientific system of performance evaluation. Along with parameters that can be subjected to quantitative evaluation, the subjective qualities of leadership also need to be given due weightage in evaluating senior officers of the Government.
The above does not in any way diminish the value of what the Cabinet Secretary has proposed. My only view is that various other parameters are important if we want to assess the performance of a leader. Serious consideration must be given to this to make the evaluation process more effective and outcome-oriented.
Views expressed are personal. The writer is a former IAS officer who served as the Chief Secretary, Govt of Uttar Pradesh
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.