The Government of India has been considering for some time, the changes that have taken place in the structure of emoluments of Government employees over the years. Conditions have also changed in several respects since the last Pay Commission made its report in 1997. Accordingly, the Sixth Central Pay Commission was appointed in October last year under the Chairmanship of Mr Justice B.N Srikrishna. The Sixth Central Pay Commission members are Shri J.S Mathur and Prof Ravindra Dholakia with Smt Sushama Nath, as the Member Secretary.
The terms of reference (ToR) of the Commission give it a mandate to examine the structure of pay, allowances and facilities/benefits, whether in cash or kind, for the following categories of employees - . Central government employees – industrial and non-industrial. . Personnel belonging to the All India Services. . Personnel belonging to the Armed Forces. . Personnel to the Union Territories. . Officers and employees of the Indian Audit and Accounts Department; and . Members of the regulatory bodies (excluding the RBI) set up under Acts of Parliament.
One of the primary objectives before the Commission is to transform the Central Government Organisations into modern, professional and citizen-friendly entities that are dedicated to the service of the people and to work out a comprehensive pay package for the categories of Central Government employees mentioned above that is suitably linked to promoting efficiency, productivity and economy through rationalization of structures, organizations, systems and processes within the government, with a view leveraging economy, accountability, responsibility, transparency, assimilation of technology and discipline.
The functioning of the Central Government Organisations have to be in harmony with the demands of the emerging global economic scenario taking into account the totality of benefits available to the employees, the need of rationalization and simplification of the same and the prevailing pay structure and retirement benefits available under the Central Public Sector Undertakings, the economic conditions in the country, the need to observe fiscal prudence in the management of the economy, the resources of the Central Government and the demands thereon on account of economic and social development, defence, national security and the global economic scenario, and the impact upon the finances of the States.
Recently, the Commission utilized ICT in an innovative manner when it decided to seek public’s opinion on some items of specific interest through a specially designed online questionnaire. The technology support for this endeavour was provided by National Informatics Centre and the medium for hosting and publicising this questionnaire was the extremely popular National Portal of India (india.gov.in).
A special section in the Portal, which has specific modules on Government and Government Employees, was dedicated to promoting the questionnaire and encouraging members of the public, peoples’ representatives, consumer associations, staff associations, State/UT governments, ministries/ departments etc to send their views on the subject by a specified deadline.
A customized software developed by NIC enabled convenient submission of public responses to different questions from the comfort of their homes. Since the questionnaire had many questions asking for detailed answers, a facility was provided to the respondents to save/edit their intermediate responses and fill up the questionnaire in multiple sessions as per their convenience. For availing this facility, a brief registration form had to be filled up but the large number of users who had already registered with the National Portal for personalized view of information could use the same login details to access the questionnaire as well. The questionnaire had different categories and sets of questions for individuals and organizations.
Other useful information on the activities of the Commission such as information called for on prevailing pay structures, questionnaires for State Government and studies undertaken by the Commission have also been published on the Portal. The meetings and hearings of the Commission with officers, unions and associations is also listed on the portal.
The Commission has received a very good response to the questionnaire from all quarters and is in the process of analyzing the same. The software developed by NIC is proving very useful for this exercise as it presents a structured view of the responses and will generate useful reports. The responses to the questionnaire, both online and through post, will be available on the portal after some time. The success of this endeavour has the potential to set an encouraging example of how technology and its innovative usage can help the government to reach out to people and give them a chance to voice their opinion on significant issues impacting on governance.
Although the public could also download the same questionnaire and submit the same by post to the Commission, still the facility of online submission of responses made things easy for people who wanted to send their valuable suggestions and views to the Commission. True to its objective, the National Portal proved to be an extremely effective medium for facilitating public participation in the process of governance.