From Reforms to Innovation

,From Reforms to Innovation
"The first Department to Change within Government of India should be Department of Administrative Re-forms” *
--- A contributor at yahoo group India-egov
In an era when governments worldwide are focusing on Ministry of Future and Department of Innovation, India still is trying to reform the Government. The word reform itself brings a negative connotation. A Department where some change may be initiated by DAR & PG will develop a resistance because the employees will feel that there is something wrong in my Department that is why Government of India is reforming it. Whereas innovation creates positive energy and all employees will be enthusiastic that out of all Departments, Government of India has selected their Department for innovation. Even the word Process Re-engineering brings a negative connotation as the employees will start questioning as to what is wrong in our processes that Government wants to change it. If you want to change the Government, implement successful e-Governance than the right words are innovation and creativity and not reforms or re-engineering.
The Department of Administrative Reforms exists to solve yesterday’s problems, rather than capitalizing on to-day’s opportunities to effectively confronts the issues of tomorrow.
But as Gandhiji said, “Be the Change, you want to see in the world”. The Department of Administrative Reforms have to sphere-head reforms within itself in order to be-come a change agent for other Departments. A brief strat-egy to lead this change is as suggested:
• Separate Public Grievances from Reforms
• Rename the Department as Ministry of Innovation.
• Vision for Department – Innovation in Governance
• Hiring of Creativity, Program Management and Process experts
• Re-visit the Manual of Office Procedures (MOP)
• Identify officers responsible for each Ministry and State
• Constitute a high level committee of Secretaries on Innovation in Government headed by Cabinet Secretary
• Constitute Institutional Framework for Innovation in Government (like NISG for e-Governance)
• Develop a National Innovation Plan (NIP)
• Identify e-Governance Projects beyond Mission Mode Projects (MMPs)
• Do a ABC analysis of Grievance received by Citizen and based on same prioritize Departments for Inno-vation
• Restructure Department (instead of divisions like e-Governance the Department should have a process innovation division)
• Department should not foray functional areas of other Departments (like IT implementation is a func-tion of DIT) and restrict to improvements in Gov-ernment Process.
• Have a Cabinet Minister In charge of Innovation Ministry
• Bring out necessary law / amendments empowering MOI (Ministry of Innovation) to bring process im-provements
• Make a database of National and International Best Practices
• Constitute an institute for capacity building in Gov-ernment Process Improvement
• Provide Creative environment within Department for officers to foster change
• Recognize Change Agents
• Identify Change Sponsors in each Department
• Sponsor Students for Process Study in various De-partments
• To have a Department of Future (for visualizing pol-icy interventions for future scenario) within Ministry of Innovation
• To have a Department of Creativity within Ministry of Innovation
• To implement paperless office initiative in Depart-ment
• Choose experts as Advisors (like in planning Com-mission)
• The Department should also attempt to integrate / re-group certain Departments which have a common agenda. The Departments must be grouped from ser-vices to citizen prospective and not Government pro-spective
• The Department must also build on internal capaci-ties for Change.
• The Department must breakaway from the hierarchical function of DS, Director, JS, AS, Secretary but should attempt to establish a flat organization like the corporate world
• The Department must benchmark international Gov-ernments and Businesses to improve.
• The focus of Department should shift from rules to outcomes.