india

Updated: Jul 10, 2019 08:10 IST

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked all ministries to create dashboards of their performance and achievements, with an emphasis on numbers, display them on their websites, and amplify them using social media as a part of the government’s plan to showcase its performance to the public, according to senior officials.

Modi also wants ministries to publicize “impactful decisions” taken in the first three months (the first 100 days) of the new government and also lay out the outlook for the next five years, this person added on condition of anonymity. And he wants things to be done in such a manner that a common person will be able to know how much work is being done in different ministries, a secretary-level officer said.

At a review meeting of different committees of secretaries (CoS) on Monday, cabinet secretary Pradeep Kumar Sinha briefed the senior bureaucrats about this, according to an official. The government has formed at least ten groups of secretaries to look into major issues and vet schemes before the union cabinet takes the final call on those issues. One of the secretaries of a particular group leads the CoS and the groups meet almost on a daily basis. In 2016, Modi had formed the first set of CoS and in his second innings as the PM, he has constituted another group of CoS to fast-track the decision-making process. These groups work with the objective of sorting out inter-ministerial differences and other hurdles while framing a policy to tackle a pressing issue.

“Within the first month of the new government, a large number of key policy decisions have been announced. The message should go the people that the government has hit the road running,” said a senior bureaucrat who was present of the meeting and who spoke on condition of anonymity.

As of now, only a handful of ministries or schemes have proper dashboards that are updated regularly. Communication expert Ritu Kant Ojha, founder & CEO of Wiyld, said, “Lack of transparency in government data has traditionally been a challenge. Though ambitious, if Modi government is able to pull this off, it will set new benchmarks in governance.”