Gist of NITI AAYOG – Draft 3 year ACTION AGENDA- Chapter on Governance

“Transparent and efficient governance is critical to the success of every policy and programme of the government.”

Topic of relevance include:

1. Role of the Government
2. Civil services reform
3. Electoral reforms
4. Corruption
5. Federalism
6. NGOs

1. ROLE OF THE GOVERNMENT

Government to continue  closure of sick CPSES & strategic disinvestment of viable PSEs, and expand investment in public health and quality education.

1. On Central PSEs
   a. Data: 2016 – operational CPSE – 235; this includes 74 classified as sick of loss making.
   b. The 74 would be closed, revived , merged leased, transferred to state government or strategically disinvested on case to case basis.
   c. Revival of non strategic CPSE to be based on sound commercial principles it  must have an element of commercial funding, and not to rely on budgetary support or loan.                                                                                d. DIPAM must speed up process of disinvestment .
2. On investment in public health and quality education
   a. Government must continue and expand its role in public health and education.
   b. End Open defecation by 2019.
   c. Bring piped drinking water to all its citizens.
   d. Correction in deficiencies in the school education, arising due to progressive deterioration in the quality as measured by the proportion of students.
   

2.CIVIL SERVICE REFORMS

1.  Empower Civil service to make quick decisions and implement them.
   For sustained high levels of performance, objective measurement of performance with high performance to be rewarded and poor performance reprimanded.
2. Need specialists:
    Rising complexity of  the economy has meant that policy making is a specialized activity. Therefore, it is essential that specialists be inducted into the system through lateral entry.
   Lateral entries will bring in competition to the established career bureaucracy.
3. Institutionalize goal setting and tracking for each department.
   Each Ministry and government agency should set outcome-based goals with a clear timeline.
   Formalise and institutionalise the existing system.
   Making the goals and progress available publicly would go some distance towards incentivising delivery.
4. Implement an HR system for government employees.
   Human Resource Management needs to be a strategic function in the government. It should be implemented through a unified single online platform that covers employees from the time they are hired to when they leave service.
   It could also facilitate Massively Open Online Course style capacity building for government employees.
5. E-governance and paperless governance ranking for ministries at central and state levels.
   Rank government agency and department on the basis of their move to e-system, reduction of paper use and citizen engagement through electronic medium.
   Benefits of this include:
   ~ increased efficiency,
   ~ better tracking of  progress on files and
   ~ improved interface with citizens.The goal should be full digitization by the end of  2018-19.
6. Outsource service delivery where possible.  
   Reduce dependence on government administrative machinery wherever possible.
   Make use of  the power of  Aadhaar based identity verification to allow private channels to provide services wherever possible.
   Identification of  such services should be taken up and PPP models to provide those services should be explored.
7. Longer tenure of  Secretaries.
   Currently, by the time an officer is promoted from Additional Secretary to Secretary, usually she has two years or less left before retirement.
   This feature creates two important inefficiencies.
   One, with a time horizon shorter than two years, the officer is hesitant to take any major initiatives.
   Two, and more importantly, to the extent that any misstep may become the cause for charges of  favouritism or corruption post retirement, the officer hesitates to take decisions on any major project.
   This causes inordinate amount of  delay in decision-making. One possible solution to this problem is early promotion to the Secretary position.
   To facilitate change, introduce lateral entry.
8. Increase specialization and induct lateral entry.  
   Develop expertise among internal staff  and induct lateral entry.
   For the former, officers may be encouraged to gain expertise in specific areas in the early stages of  careers and the current system of  rapid rotation of  officers across ministries may be replaced by a system of  longer postings according to specialization.
   Officers should also be encouraged to enhance their knowledge and skills in the chosen area of  specialization through intensive training.
   This specialization by the internal staff  needs to be complemented by lateral entry of  highly specialized staff  on fixed-term contracts.  Such a system will bring top talent and energy into the government and will lend new dynamism to the ministries.

3.MONITORING OF GOVERNMENT PROGRAMMES

• Third party monitoring of Government programmes needs to be strengthened to ensure periodical review of the progress and the impact of these programmes.
• PRAGATI is an effective tool in monitoring the major infrastructure projects.
• Outcome budgeting will help in setting transparent targets for all programmes. These needs to be strengthened and embedded deep into our policy culture.
• Push for DBT in various welfare schemes with an objective to increase transparency and effectiveness of these programmes.
• Centralised monitoring of the push towards DBT across different schemes should be created, which will utilize innovative techniques  such as telephonic and Inter active voice surveys to asses the progress of DBT and its impact on beneficiaries.
  

4.ELECTORAL REFORMS

• Election should be free, fair and in synchronized manner so as to cause minimum ‘campaign mode’ disruption in governance
• Must begin work towards a synchronized two stage election from 2024 election.

5.CORRUPTION RELATED REFORM

Corruption hinders progress of economic growth, undermines trust in democratic institutions and has a broader corrosive impact on the process of human development.

Steps to be taken include:
a. Speeding up decision making on corruption cases

• It takes on an average 8 plus years to finalise a major vigilance case.
• Need larger judicial reforms, procedural reforms, strengthening up of special courts, introduction of time process

b. Curbing black money

• Demonetization in 2016
• Promotion of digital payments
• Stricter limits on cash transactions,
• Limit on cash contributions on election campaigns.
• Encourage Aadhar Pay and RuPay cards payments
• Keep tax levels moderate, tax administration simple and transparent.
• Reforms in real estate transactions
• Seeding of Aadhar
• Moderate stamp duties
• Need to address corruption cases among tax official.  

c. Minimising discretionary powers of officers
    i. How to achieve this?

• Where officers are required to enforce rules, rules themselves should provide unambiguous instructions that leads to elimination of discretionary powers.
• Adoption of technology pushes government services of a neutral and transparent platform.
• Introduce other tech led solutions which encourage government interaction with citizens in presence less and pare less manner.
• Tech led posting of officers. – discretionary positing’s leads to corruption and favouritism.
  

d. Political financing reform
e. Implement the reforms introduced in Union budget with respect to funding of parties.

6. FEDERALISM
    Cooperative and Competitive Federalism is a signature initiative of the government.
Steps so far in this line has been:

• Creation of NITI Aayog (strong states make strong nation)
• Acceptance of recommendation of FFC. (increased fiscal autonomy to the States)

Further steps that needs to be taken. This include:

• Need to create an enabling environment where States can be the drivers of economic growth
• Ranking of States – fosters genuine competition between states.
  i. NITI Aayog to rank states on Ease of doing business, improvement of health, education and water outcomes.
  ii. NITI Aayog to provide technical assistance to states to improve performance.
• Fiscal independence
  i. Careful review of CSS.
  ii. Course correction
  iii.   Analyse the CSS and develop a long term roadmap. 

7. NGO
    An effective partnership with government and the NGO can help in Governance in social sector schemes, as the voluntary sector can help significantly in filing the gap in the capability of the government to deliver its social welfare programme to targeted beneficiaries.