Government starts online performance assessment system for bureaucrats

NEW DELHI: Probity, Sparrow and Solve -- these are the three new buzzwords for the central government by which bureaucrats and their service records are now going to be assessed through online portals to take the big call on retiring the non-performers or identifying those lacking integrity. 

The latest is the 'Online Probity Management System' launched by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) few days ago in association with other ministries to assess the integrity and performance levels of officers. 

The government has been assessing the performance of all officers who have turned 50 or 55 or have completed 30 years of service to decide whether they be allowed to continue in service or compulsorily retired. 

"Since the number of officers under review is huge, it involves lot of paperwork at ministries and the submission of regular physical reports.

The new 'Probity' portal makes the process completely online by which ministries can now submit their reports online and the government gets a birds eye-view of the status on one portal," a government official told ET. 

The Minister of State for DoPT and PMO Jitendra Singh on Tuesday said 30 Group A officers and 99 Group B officers had been sent on retirement in the past few months. Citing the huge number of officer records being scanned, Singh said 24,000 Group A officers and 42,251 Group B officers were put under the scanner before the recent compulsory retirements while the government was looking into service records of another 34,451 Group A officers and 42,521 from Group B to check on non-performers.

The new 'Probity' portal is also monitoring the rotation of officers on sensitive and non-sensitive posts to identify officers occupying sensitive positions for over three months, a senior bureaucrat told ET. 

The Sparrow (Smart performance appraisal report recording online window) system of the DoPT is meanwhile being used to make the entire appraisal system online and accessible for review by the ministries concerned. 

The DoPT has recently extended 'Sparrow' from just the IAS cadre to 13 cadres, including the central secretariat services (CSS). An official said the idea is to make the 'Probity' and 'Sparrow' portals work in conjunction. The third DoPT portal is 'Solve' --a system for online vigilance enquiry for board-level appointees. 

There is a plan to expand this portal for other employees to help the government coordinate between 'Probity', 'Sparrow' and 'Solve' portals to assess officers' performance and integrity.

Source : http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/