Friday, July 26, 2013

There is hunger for reforms & reinvention in govt: Cabinet Secretary Seth

CAN government bodies change their very DNA so that they habitually innovate and continually improve their performance without having to be pushed from outside? In a government newsletter, India's top bureaucrat and cabinet secretary Ajit K Seth concedes that there are many more miles to go before the government achieves the vision  of David Osborne, father of the term “reinvention”. In the July edition of the quarterly newsletter called,...
“Performance Matters” brought out by the performance management division of the Cabinet Secretariat,  Seth however adds that “the journey has begun and there is palpable hunger for reforms and reinvention at all levels of administration.” He then elaborates Osborne's vision of reinvention. “He (Osborne) warns that reinvention is not just another word for reform, nor is it synonymous with downsizing, or privatization, or simply cutting waste or fraud. He argues that it is about something much deeper, something amounting to changing the very DNA of public organizations so that they habitually innovate, continually improving their performance without having to be pushed from outside. It is about building an entrepreneurially-minded public sector with a built-in drive to improve.”
Seth further says that the government does not need to go far to find answers to most of the vexing problems. “I am struck by the range and depth of innovative reforms in various parts of our vast country. We need to learn from these experiences and adapt them to suit the local conditions.” But the question remains how fast the government would succeed in bringing in those elements of innovation.
Meanwhile, the government has extended the tenure of Dr Prajapati Trivedi, secretary of performance management under cabinet secretariat for one more year till August 2014. Earlier in an order dated December 27, 2011, the government had extended Dr Trivedi's tenure till he "attains the age of 60 years, i.e. August 2013". A former World Bank senior executive who had worked in 25 nations around the world has been a driving force for the government to measure performance of various ministries through a mechanism called RFD. Many career bureaucrats however find it cumbersome to go through the processes being introduced by this former Harvard professor and World Bank economist. Yet, Dr Trivedi enjoys the backing of the Prime Minister himself.


  1. the rot sets in at entry itself..performance evaluation at training academies itself is sub standard which makes people complacent..disused and discarded officers go and become faculty at mussourie and other academies

  2. Looks like the newsletter is one year old ... This is from July 2012 issue