Continuing government's efforts to reform bureaucracy for better delivery, Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in an official memorandum has asked all departments and ministries to arrange an in-house weekly training programme for their staff regularly.

The memorandum, based on prime minister Narendra Modi's directions at a meeting of ministry of personnel he had chaired on September 12, said while the senior civil servants are exposed to a number of training programmes at different stages, there is no training for the actual steal frame that included group B and group C employees.

The guidelines issued by the PMO said the each training session should have ideally 45 persons for duration of one hour to be held on a weekly basis. The objective of the in-house training is to provide training to employees as well as make senior officers interact with their subordinates regularly in every department. Though the memorandum says the departments are free to choose training topics as per their requirements, the broad subjects identified for training are related to file management, preventive vigilance, litigation management (handling of court and CAT cases), record management, noting and drafting, gender sensitisation, financial management as well as promoting ethics and values.

During his meetings with the officials of the ministry of personnel, which is also responsible for training as well, the prime minister emphasised that improving the skills of bureaucracy was necessary for the implementation of new policies. "The effectiveness with which the new policies are implemented will largely be dependent on the quality of civil service administration and the ability of its members to operate effectively in the changed environment," the PM is quoted to have told the ministry officials.

Immediately after the memorandum was issued, the department of personnel has decided to organise such a training programme every Wednesday. It has nominated all officials form lower division clerks (LDCs) to under-secretaries to be present in the training programme.