The Union Government has announced Mission Karma Yogi as the largest capacity building programme for civil servants in the history of India, promising to build well-rounded professionals who "can stand up to the expectations of the people."
In addition to setting levels of competence for each role, the programme also seeks to improve the skills of civil servants by providing them with specially designed courses. The programme will be open to civil servants on a country-wide scale across all sections, and will help them better perform their role by establishing standardised levels of competence for each role.
"A civil servant must be imaginative, innovative, proactive, polite, transparent, tech-oriented and creative" all at the same time in order to meet current challenges.
OBJECTIVE:
The ultimate objective is to improve the delivery of government services and to reduce the gap between the government and the citizens. Through effective capacity building, the programme aims at improving the ease of living and greater ease of doing business.
Apart from this, it also provides the government and civil servants with insights into their capabilities and competencies.
NEED FOR THE PROGRAM:
In a country where policy implementation is a major obstacle, setting competency goals for civil servants will allow them to better understand their role and better serve the people.
Fragmented learning: Present day training landscape is diverse and fragmented, leading civil servants to think departmentally and in silos. Since thinking is parochial, there is a lack of a shared understanding of India’s national developmental aspirations and needs.
Lack of continuous learning: While courses for civil servants are offered in patches, there is an absolute absence of a lifelong learning environment. Training and learning needs to be regarded as an ongoing process and not something that is achieved in bits and pieces.
Redundancy & duplication of efforts: There is duplication of effort and there is a lack of mutually shared experience as the learning process is fragmented and department wise.
THE AREAS OF FOCUS:
- The government thinks that at the moment there is too much emphasis on rules and wants to move the focus away from emphasising the position. Under this, each position was divided into roles and activities and a degree of competency was set against each one.
- In order to better understand and thus better serve the task, competencies are further split into area, functional and behavioural aspects.
- In addition, a digital platform called IGOT was developed that would provide learning content from around the world as well as from home.
- Since this is a digital platform, by keeping track of the number of courses a civil servant is taking, it will allow the civil servant to monitor her career progress.
- Complementing "off-site learning" would concentrate more on "on-site learning." There will be more emphasis on e-learning,.
THE PROGRAMME ELEMENTS:
o HR Council: A National HR Council headed by PM Modi will head the programme. It will include selected ministers of the GOI, chief ministers, national and foreign experts, and leaders of thought and industry. It will provide guidance and oversee plans for capacity building.
o Capacity Building Committee: The Commission will set test criteria and assist the HR Council with reporting and recommendations on capacity expansion and the implementation of a robust national training programme. Shared faculty and services will be developed and all central training institutions will have a supervisory role.
o SPV: The special-purpose vehicle will be a 100% government-owned company responsible for managing digital resources and curating the best courses in the world and India and providing it for Rs 431 subscription to civil servants. Over a period of 5 years, about Rs 510 crore will be invested.
CONCLUSION:
Thus, the emphasis will be changed from rule-specific to role-specific by Mission Karma yogi. The project will have an ongoing capacity building process, a continuous refresh of the talent pool, and an equal opportunity for personal as well as professional development and self-training recognition for added value at all levels.
