Know All About Mission Karmayogi

Often, we hear Indian citizens complaining about how Indian bureaucrats are the reason behind the consistent downfall of the country. It is also prevalently accepted that civil servants' recruitment and the post-recruitment system is obsolete. And, for a developing country like India, the civil servant ecosystem requires a significant upgrade.

To address such issues, the Indian government has developed a National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building (NPCSCB), Mission Karmayogi. It is an improvement in the Indian Bureaucracy. It was launched on 2nd September 2020 by the Union Cabinet. This mission objectifies to put the foundation capacity building of the Indian civil servants and improve governance. This article highlights everything you must know about the scheme.

What is Mission Karmayogi?

Mission Karmayogi is a national programme for civil services. The mission addresses the changing requirements and objectives of Indians. This programme, secured by an apex body and regulated by the Prime Minister, has been designed to improve civil services. The programme acknowledges that the workforce needs a competency-driven capacity-building methodology that concentrates on conveying competencies to discharge the roles. This is accomplished through a Competency Framework for Civil Services, which is completely native to India. The program will cover almost 46 lakhs central employees between 2020 – 2025. The programme is perfected by iGOT Karmayogi, an all-inclusive online platform allowing face-to-face, online, and unified learning. The link between mission Karmayogi and iGOT Karmayogi will permit the following:

• AI-enabled evaluation of competency gaps and levels in a person
• Data drive HR decisions

Features of Mission Karmayogi

Mission Karmayogi is an initiative towards enhanced human resource management methodology in the Indian government. Some of its key features are:

• The programme brings a change from Rules Based to Roles Based HR management, and the concentration here will be to allocate jobs to individuals based on their capabilities
• It is a training that will be given to civil servants on-site
• The civil servants will be able to adapt to such an ecosystem that will bring shared personnel, institutions, and learning materials
• All the civil services positions will be standardized under the Framework of the Roles, Activities, and Competencies (FRACs) approach. On the Basis of this approach, the learning content will be formed and delivered to every government entity
• Civil servants will build their capabilities in a self-driven, instructed learning path
• All the central ministries, their organizations, and departments will create a common ecosystem of learning through yearly financial subscriptions for each employee
• Public training institutions, startups, universities, and individual experts will be allowed to participate in the capacity-building measure

Why is Mission Karmayogi required?

All this while, a lot of people have been asking about the need for this mission. Here are some pointers to answer this question:

• In the bureaucracy, along with administrative capacity, there is a requirement to develop domain knowledge
• A proper recruitment process has to be formalized to match public services with the competencies of bureaucrats to find the right person for a specific job
• The plan is to start correctly at the recruitment level and invest in developing more capacity throughout the rest of the careers
• The capacities of governance will have to be improved with this mission to Handle the complexities of the growing Indian Economy

Pillars of Mission Karmayogi

This mission is based on these six pillars:

• Policy framework
• Monitoring and evaluating the framework
• Institutional framework
• Electronic human resource management system
• Competency framework
• Digital learning framework

Mission Karmayogi Apex Body

The Public Human Resource Council, under the chairmanship of India’s Prime Minister, is going to be the apex body of this mission. Along with that, other members would be:

• Union Ministers
• Public Service Functionaries
• Chief Ministers
• Global Thought Leaders
• Well-known Public HR Practitioners
• Thinkers

Institutional Framework of the Mission Karmayogi

Jotted down below are the institutions helping with the implementation of mission Karmayogi:

• The Public Human Resources (HR) Council of the Prime Minister
• Coordination Unit regulated by the Cabinet Secretary
• Capacity Building Commission
• Special Purpose Vehicle for owning and functioning the digital assets and technological platform for online training

What is iGOT Karmayogi?

iGOT Karmayogi is an online learning platform operating under the Ministry of Human Resources and Development (MHRD). The platform is liable for taking content from global best practices entrenched in Indian national philosophy to deliver capacity-building programmes. iGOT Karmayogi will allow a complete reform of the capacity building at the process, institutional and individual levels. Civil servants must take online courses, and their performance in every course will be assessed. This platform will have almost every digital e-learning course of world-renowned content for civil servants. Along with that, iGOT Karmayogi will also have services, such as confirmation after the probation period, notification of vacancies, work assignments, deployment, and more.

Objectives of the Capacity Building Commission

Here are the primary objectives of the capacity building commission:

• Helping the Public Human Resource Council
• Supervising central training institutions
• Creating external resource centres and faculty
• Assisting stakeholder departments in the integration of the capacity-building programmes
• Putting forward recommendations on the calibration of the capacity building, training, methodology, and pedagogy
• Suggesting policy interventions pertaining to the HR practises in the government

Budget for Mission Karmayogi

This mission is supposed to cover approximately 4.6 million central employees. For this, an amount of Rs. 510.86 crores has been assigned, which has to be spent over a period of 5 years (2020-21 to 2024-25). The budget will be partially funded by multilateral help attuning to $50 million.

Benefits of Mission Karmayogi

As far as the benefits of this mission are concerned, here are the major ones:

Rule-Based to Role Based

This programme is going to support a transformation from rule-based to role-based HR management. This way, the allocation of work will be done by matching the competencies of an official to the post’s requirements

Behavioural and Functional Competencies

Besides domain knowledge training, the scheme is also going to focus on behavioural and functional competencies. It will offer a chance for civil servants to consistently strengthen and build their competencies through a mandated and self-driven learning path

Standard of Uniform Training

Mission Karmayogi will be harmonising training standards across India. This will help set up a common understanding of developmental and aspirational objectives.

Vision for Reformed India

The mission has an objective of building such civil services that have the right knowledge, skills, and attitude and are future-ready.

Online Learning

Complementing the off-site learning methodology, this mission is also highlighting the on-site method

Implementation of Best Practices

It will be partnering with state-of-the-art content creators, such as individual experts, start-tips, universities, and public training institutions

Challenges of Mission Karmayogi

Apart from the benefits and aspirations that this project brings, there are certain challenges that the government will have to conquer to ensure the successful implementation of this mission, such as:

• In the bureaucracy, there is an inclination towards resisting changes that ultimately challenge the status quo
• The bureaucracy has to understand the requirement of domain knowledge and the transition from the generalist to the specialist method
• The authoritative person must possess all the requisite experience and skills to handle the technicalities
• The bureaucracy should undergo a behavioural change as well, and everybody must accept it as the need
• Online courses should not become another chance for civil servants to go on sabbatical leaves. Proper attendance and participation in the courses should be ensured to accomplish the purpose

Wrapping Up

While Mission Karmayogi is a much-appreciated move by the government, one must also keep in mind that bureaucratic sluggishness does exist. Apart from ensuring improvements in the competencies of civil servants, the government should also keep an eye on political interferences in the entire system. Evidently, the process of reform and transition will not be easy. However, this mission is a good initiative in the right direction. And if implemented successfully, it can totally transform how the Indian bureaucracy works.