• On the occasion of Good Governance Day on December 25, Union Minister Jitendra Singh launched the extended version of Mission Karmayogi with three new features on the iGOT (Integrated Government Online Training) Karmayogi platform — My iGOT, blended programmes and curated programs.

• The central government has been celebrating Good Governance Day on December 25 since 2014 in honour of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to promote citizen-centric, efficient and transparent governance and improve service delivery.

• Singh also launched 12 domain-specific capacity-building e-learning courses and a new blended learning programme named VIKAS (Variable & Immersive Karmayogi Advanced Support).

• The minister said that civil servants need to harness the potential of the digital revolution and embrace the latest IT innovations as a means to advance digital governance.

Mission Karmayogi

• Civil servants play a vital role in rendering a wide variety of services, implementing welfare programmes and performing core governance functions. 

• The skill sets and capacity of the civil servants play a vital role in service delivery, programme implementation and performing core governance functions.

• However, the civil services capacity building landscape is marred with challenges like sporadic training policy interventions and stereotyped working in silos.

• On September 2, 2020, the Union Cabinet approved the National Program for Civil Services Capacity Building (NPCSCB) – Mission Karmayogi. 

• Under NPCSCB, the Department of Personnel and Training is taking steps to calibrate all civil services tasks to a framework of roles, activities and competencies (FRAC) to identify the behavioural, functional and domain needs of each individual position in the government.

• NPCSCB has been carefully designed to lay the foundations for capacity building for civil servants so that they remain entrenched in Indian culture and sensibilities and remain connected, with their roots, while they learn from the best institutions and practices across the world.

• The key philosophy of NPCSCB is to create an ecosystem of competency driven training and Human Resource (HR) management by transitioning from a ‘rule-based’ system to ‘role-based’ system.

• Mission Karmayogi aims to prepare civil servants for the future by making them more creative, constructive, imaginative, innovative, proactive, professional, progressive, energetic, enabling, transparent and technology-enabled. 

• Empowered with specific role-competencies, the civil servants will be able to ensure efficient service delivery of the highest quality standards.

• The focus of NPCSCB is on promoting ease of living and ease of doing business, by considerably enhancing the citizen-government interface. This involves creation of both functional and behavioural competencies among the civil servants.

• An online learning platform (iGOT-Karmayogi) was developed that allows the departments to provide training resources and opportunities to their employees.

• Integrated Government Online Training (iGOT)-Karmayogi platform brings the scale and state-of-the-art infrastructure to augment the capacities of officials. 

• The platform is expected to evolve into a vibrant and world-class market place for content, where carefully curated and vetted digital e-learning material will be made available. 

• Besides capacity building, service matters like confirmation after probation period, deployment, work assignment and notification of vacancies, etc would eventually be integrated with the proposed competency framework.

• To cover around 46 lakh central government employees, a sum of Rs 510.86 crore will be spent over a period of five years from 2020-21 to 2024-25.

• This includes technical assistance from the World Bank Group to the tune of $50 million as a loan.

Mission Karmayogi has six pillars:

i) Policy Framework

ii) Institutional Framework

iii) Competency Framework

iv) Digital Learning Framework (Integrated Government Online Training Karmayogi Platform)

v) Electronic Human Resource Management System (e-HRMS)

vi) Monitoring and Evaluation Framework.

Framework for implementation of the programme: 

i) Prime Minister’s Public Human Resource Council (PMHRC): A Council under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister is conceived to be the apex body for driving and providing strategic direction to civil service reforms and capacity building.

ii) Cabinet Secretariat Coordination Unit: It will monitor the implementation of NPCSCB, align stakeholders and provide mechanism for overseeing capacity building plans.

iii) Capacity Building Commission: It is set up for functional supervision of training institutions and facilitate preparation of annual capacity building plans.

iv) Special Purpose Vehicle under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013: It will own and operate all the digital assets created for NPCSCB on behalf of the Government of India.

v) Programme Management Unit (PMU): It will provide programme management and support services to the Department.

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