BENGALURU: The Union government must introduce a centrally-sponsored scheme for ‘capacity building’, as each state might not have the bandwidth to improve the quality of employees, Karnataka Administrative Reforms Commission-2 Chairman TM Vijay Bhaskar suggested here on Friday.
Other than the best quality training programmes reserved for the country and state-level civil service officers, Bhaskar said there is a need to train frontline workers like ward officers, police constables or gram panchayat members for using software like Microsoft Office and basic technology tools. Currently, state officers fall behind in those aspects and training them will improve the quality of work, with support from the government.
Especially in areas of direct public interest, like urban development, food and civil supplies and revenue departments. Not all states are able to set aside funds for capacity building due to multiple socio-economic factors, hence dedicated support from the Centre will help them lay the foundation and focus on creating citizen-centric employees, Bhaskar explained.
He was speaking at the ‘Building State Capacity’ lecture organised by the Indian Institute of Public Administration, Bengaluru, discussing measures being taken to bridge the gap between civil servants and citizens through training/upskilling.
Explaining the Karmayogi Bharat initiative, Dr R Balasubramaniam, member - human resources, Capacity Building Commission, in his lecture on capacity building, said the government is taking efforts to shift from the karmachari to karmayogi mindset, and rule-based to role-based approach during the process of capacity building.
They are mapping out ministries and identifying the role of each employee to study their functional activities and motivation to perform them. The commission has also signed multiple MoUs with different states to work cohesively towards it. Over time, the government might also plan to introduce a domain course which is mandatory for officers before shifting to other profiles. They will even study trajectories of people to understand what role they will be suited for in the next five years.