BHUBANESWAR: The State government has directed all its departments to participate in the evaluation process for selection in SKOCH Governance Award, 2022 by submitting their best performing projects.Development Commissioner PK Jena has asked all additional chief secretaries, principal secretaries and secretaries to submit new projects taken up by their respective departments for evaluation by the SKOCH Group, which evaluates states every year in the fields of governance, finance, technology, economics and social sector.
The direction came after Group Chairman Sameer Kochhar sought the intervention of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik citing that Odisha’s performance relating to governance on various sectors remained below average as compared to other states and previous years.
While the State was ranked third last year after evaluation of 67 projects, this year only 19 projects have been recommended for evaluation till September. With 28.1 points scored from 66 projects, Gujarat tops the list so far and Odisha has dropped to the 19th position.As per the assessment based on primary research and outcomes study, as many as 24 departments have not submitted any project for evaluation by the jury committee. The State has scored only 0.65 from the 19 projects submitted till the end of last month.