Keeping an eye on babus: Jharkhand shows the way

It was Jharkhand which took the lead in changing the work culture in Government offices.

Now, the Centre has taken a leaf out of the State’s experience and has introduced an attendance system aimed at not just ensuring punctuality in Central Government offices, but also substantial savings over a period of time.

Earlier this year, Jharkhand introduced a unique identity Aadhaar-based centralised attendance system for State Government employees. The Centre followed suit and enforced this system for its employees from October 1.

The man behind this system is 1978 batch Indian Administrative Service officer from the Jharkhand cadre, Ram Sewak Sharma, who is currently Secretary in the Communication and Information Technology Ministry. Prior to that, he was Chief Secretary, Jharkhand, after working for over three years as Director General and Mission Director of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) in the Centre.

“In Jharkhand, there were serious problems of absenteeism and late arrival, early departures, which was a disincentive for employees who were sincere and punctual,” Sharma told BusinessLine , adding that after the system was put in place, there is visible improvement in the punctuality of employees.

According to www.attendance.jharkhand.gov.in, 78 per cent employees are in office by 10.30 a.m, and only 6 per cent report after 11 a.m. The average in-time is 10.15 a.m and average out-time is 5.49 p.m.

Sharma said a positive fall-out of this was that the six-day work week was changed to a five-day one in the Jharkhand Secretariat.

Initially, this was done for three months (January-March this year), but has now been extended till further orders. The State Government has also decided to extend this system in district and block offices, too.

“Progressively, this will be extended to schools and hospitals in moffusil areas. The minimum requirements of infrastructure and connectivity at the front-end make this system highly scalable and easy to roll out,” he said, adding that the attendance can be marked on a machine mounted on the wall or on the desktop.

The beauty of the system, said Sharma, was that real-time status of employees can be tracked, be it in Jharkhand or in the Central Government. For instance, as on Monday, 149 Central Government organisations were listed on www.attendance.gov.in.

A total of 50,696 employees belonging to these organisations got registered, but only 36,869 were verified, meaning that these people could mark their attendance on the new system. Out of the 36,869 employees, 28,201 (over 75 per cent) were present. The website also showed that 87.8 per cent of those present checked in by 10 a.m.

Sharma claimed that the software for the entire system had been developed on an open-source stack without any extra cost. The team that had completed both the server-side and client-side software consists of only three people, of which two were involved in the system in Ranchi (the capital of Jharkhand).

The only cost involved is the procurement and installation of devices at the front-end and their maintenance, which is being done by National Informatics Centre, he added.

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