Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Sept 25: Notwithstanding Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah underlying the need for objective way of assessing performance through Results Framework Document (RFD) initiative, majority of the State Government departments have yet not completed the documents for the current financial year in all respects despite proper guidance from the Programme Management Division of Union Cabinet Secretariat. The situation is notwithstanding the fact that hectic exercise was conducted during last year for finalization of RFDs and putting the same in the public domain right from the very beginning of the financial year.
Official sources told EXCELSIOR that after being approached by the J&K Government, the Programme Management Division of Union Cabinet Secretariat last year carried out a detailed exercise in consultation with the Planning and Development Department of J&K Government in order to properly guide the officers of State in having Result Framework Document of their respective departments for assessing their performance in objective way.
At that time, it was stated that by the Government that the trial which was carried during the remaining period of last year would help the departments in getting the RFDs prepared without any difficulty that too at the very beginning of the next financial year. “However, despite lapse of nearly six months of the current financial year majority of the departments could not complete the RFDs in all respect and as per the guidelines provided by the Programme Management Division of Union Cabinet Secretariat”, sources said.
“Though some departments prepared the draft RFDs and placed the same before the groups of Programme Management Division (PMD) in the recent past yet the latter found several shortcomings in the documents and directed for carrying out necessary changes”, they said, adding “this indicates that the detailed exercise which was carried out last year was an attempt in futility”.
In response to a question, sources said, “the Planning and Development Department, which is the Nodal Department to review the performance of the departments under RFD mechanism, has now forwarded the minutes of meetings convened by PMD groups to all the departments with the directions to carry out changes as per the suggestions and remove shortcomings”.
The RFDs of the departments will be subjected to review by the Planning and Development Department soon after submission of the same by carrying out suggested changes. Thereafter the documents will be uploaded on the websites of respective departments so that general public could come to know the priorities of each of the departments during the current year, they said.
“Since this exercise is going to take time nobody knows when the RFDs for the current financial year would be ready in all respects and put in public domain, which otherwise should have been done in the very first month of the current financial year—April”, sources said.
It is pertinent to mention here that RFD provides a summary of the most important results that a department expects to achieve during the financial year. The document has two main purposes—shifting the focus from process orientation to result orientation and having objective and fair basis to evaluate department’s overall performance at the end of the year.
RFD is essentially a record of understanding between a Minister representing the people’s mandate, and the Secretary of a Department responsible for implementing this mandate. This document contains not only the agreed objectives, policies, programs and projects but also success indicators and targets to measure progress in implementing them.
Though a senior officer of the Planning and Development Department, on the condition of anonymity, stated that targets for the current financial year for the departments have already been set yet how the same could be achieved when the RFDs are under changes as per the suggestions made by the PMD groups remains a million dollar question.
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