Apparently burdened with workload, several officials of the Delhi Government have been ignoring phone calls from their superiors these days. Taking exception of the practice of keeping their mobile phones off after officer hours and on weekends, the Government has asked its officials not to remain out of reach. While underlining their habit, a circular issued by the Delhi Chief Secretary SK Srivastava recently said that lack of communication had been hampering disposal of important work.
“Government officials are frequently required to be contacted after office hours for urgent work. It has been found that sometimes their mobile phones are either switched off or the officials do not receive calls. lack of communication in such emergent circumstances impedes disposal of important work,” said the circular, which was sent to all principal secretaries, secretaries and head of departments (HoDs) of the Government.
The Chief Secretary has further advised the officials saying that in case they fail to attend the calls from office due to inescapable situations, should call back immediately. “All officials are advised to keep their mobile phones switched on to facilitate urgent communication and to pick up calls forthwith, unless prevented by unavoidable circumstances. Even in such unavoidable circumstances, all officials should call back at the earliest to facilitate time bound disposal of work,” the circular read. Meanwhile, all senior officials and HoDs have been asked to prepare a roadmap to bring transformation to improve performance of each department and time bound delivery of services. The Chief Secretary has asked them to submit their plans by the end of this month.
“Efficient service delivery is one of the prime objectives of any Government. With the passage of time, administrative processes can become misaligned vis-à-vis Government objectives. The problem faced by people can relate to long queues, tedious procedures, quality related issues, lack of transparency and corruption etc. This requires radical redesign of government process to improve performance,” said a separate circular issued by the Chief Secretary last week. While suggesting a few measures to prepare a plan, the CS said each department or agency should list out services being delivered and should prioritised those services which are critical or of high volumes.