For the first time, the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, is likely to make public the performance rating of 62 departments and their Secretaries for the first full financial year. These ratings will be based on departmental performance against the commitments made in their RFDs (Results Framework Documents) for 2010-11, and are being prepared by the Cabinet Secretariat.

Five ratings

Official sources told Business Line that there will be five ratings — Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair and Poor. These will help the Government give performance-linked incentives for the Secretary.

The rating might also begin to influence post-retirement postings for various constitutional and regulatory positions, added sources.

‘Very Good' and ‘Good' ratings for two consecutive years will make the Secretaries eligible for performance-related incentive, or PRI. It could be as high as 40 per cent of the basic salary of the Secretary.

Though the PRI scheme for the bureaucrats has been recommended by various Pay Commissions and agreed upon by the Government as far back as 1988, it has not been implemented.

Sources said that as various arms of the Government are agreed on the PRI, it is likely to be implemented any time. However, it could take another year to get the PRI as the Government will consider giving PRI to 62 Secretaries based on their performance in financial years 2010-11 and 2011-12.

On the other hand, the Secretaries with bad rating may not find it easy to have plum post-retirement careers in the government. “This is the Right to Information (RTI) age. Anyone can post a query regarding the previous posting, and if the particular bureaucrat had not performed well the Government would not like to post him/her on key constitutional or regulatory positions post-retirement, to save itself from embarrassments,” said a senior government official.

The criteria

The criteria for determining the ratings will be contained in the Result Framework Document. This includes the mandatory creation of a Citizen's Charter and a grievances redress mechanism. The Charter will disclose what kind of services a particular government department will provide to the citizens, how much time it needs to complete the service, how a citizen can complain if he is not satisfied and by when grievances can be redressed.

Finally, an independent third party audit will decide whether a certain standard has been achieved or not. An expert committee consisting of a retired Secretary, professors from Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and others will interact with the bureaucrats. Based on all these factors, ratings will be given.

Sources said that for the current financial year (2011-12), a total of 74 departments and Secretaries will be rated. The Government did go in for such an exercise last year but the ratings were just for three months.

That rating was not made public. But the Cabinet Secretary wrote letters to the top-rated Secretaries.

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