Neeraj Rohmetra
JAMMU, Mar 24: To ensure transparency and accountability, the State Government has directed all the Administrative Departments to upload their Result Framework Documents (RFD) for the next financial year (2013-14) at the earliest possible.
Official sources stated that RFD is a performance assessment and management system aimed at judging the performance and functioning of departments on the basis of timeline completion of targets, outcome of schemes, priorities fixed, quality of work done, status of benefits of projects actually accruing to people and other ingredients.
“About 33 Government Departments had prepared their respective RFD for the last quarter of the current financial year and an appraisal of the same was done on the 7th of this month by the High Powered Committee”, sources said, adding, the High Powered Committee comprised Chief Secretary, Principal Secretary Finance, Principal Secretary Planning and Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister”.
Sources said, “Subsequently fresh directions have been issued to all the Administrative Departments to prepare their documents for the next financial year. They have been told to submit their respective RFDs for 2013-14 dwelling upon department’s objectives, policies, programmes and targets”, they said adding, “each document has to be signed by their Administrative Secretary and the Minister concerned”.
The document in fact serves as a record of understanding between the Head of the Department and the Minister concerned about the policies and programmes to be implemented during a year. At the end of the year, each department’s achievements against the agreed targets would be assessed at a meeting between the Administrative Secretary and the Minister concerned and take corrective steps, wherever necessary.
Sources stated that the RFD shall provide a summary of the most important results that a department expects to achieve during the year. The document has been formulated with twin purposes-moving the focus of the department from process-orientation to result-orientation and providing an objective and fair basis to evaluate the department’s overall performance at the end of the year.
“Jammu and Kashmir is the 11th State in the country to introduce this system of accountability and the State Government had also series of workshops in association with Secretary Performance Management, Union Cabinet Secretariat for apprising the officials about the need for such an initiatives”, sources added.
Sources stated that the system is being used to assess the performance of each department, evaluate to identify bottlenecks, shortcomings, if any and to improve the performance by taking corrective measures.
As per the Union Cabinet Secretariat guidelines, the Results Framework as well as the achievements against the performance goals laid down at the beginning of the year, can also be reviewed after six months by the concerned Administrative Department/ Ministry and goals reset if required taking into account the priorities at that point of time.
Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah had taken great interest in implementation of the RFD and had always underlined the need for objective way of assessing performance of Government Departments through this initiative.
The Central Task Forces on RFD had also visited the State in the month of January and held interaction with the Chief Minister, who had expressed gratitude to its members for guiding the State Departments in formulating RFDs and setting the stage ready to launch the new initiative in the State to help good-governance and ensuring outcomes of works reach to people in a fixed time frame.
Sources stated that Finance Department has also uploaded its RFD on the 15th of this month. While rolling out the documents, the Minister for Finance and Ladakh Affairs, Abdul Rahim Rather had described it as a scientific method for evaluation of efficiency and accountability through measurable outputs and outcome in the department.
“The Finance Department is now gearing up to put online the RFD for the next financial year and the process is likely to conclude soon”, sources asserted.
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