Questions
- There is a lot of thrust on translation of traditional governance to e-governance. But less on transformation of personnel which are responsible to make it effective. Discuss. (10 marks)
- “When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself public property.” Discuss this quote in light of phrase that civil service is a service of vocation. (10 marks)
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Model Solutions
Q1. There is a lot of thrust on translation of traditional governance to e-governance. But less on transformation of personnel which are responsible to make it effective. Discuss. (10 marks)
Model structure
Introduction
- E-Governance is the use of information and communication technology to make administration and governance easy and efficient. It involves replacement of paper work and manual intervention with use of machines and gadgets.
Main Body
- As per a study by the International Telecommunication Union, governance improves by only 1% when the actual e-governance situation improves by 10%. This means that e-governance is more about change in attitude of personnel, beneficiaries and in work culture, rather than just an enabling environment and change in machines.
- Transformation instead of translation involves-
- Inter-disciplinary policy making by departmental integration which prevents silo approach. For eg, for women empowerment, their health, education, skills and employment needs must be considered.
- Better leadership skills and objectivity which makes easy access to governance facilities. Much of the population is still illiterate and suffers from digital divide. And to ensure they are not denied benefits of e-governance, transformation of personnel is essential.
- Enabling environment needs to be ensured by methods like geo tagging of assets in MGNREGS to prevent corruption and ensure accountability.
- Also, there is a need for capacity building of citizens by removing deficits in digital infrastructure and fostering digital literacy by initiatives like PMGDISHA.
- More focus must be on values reorientation rather than machine deployment only. And to ensure this, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology launched e-Kranti or e-Governance 2.0.
Conclusion
- Digital India was launched by the government to utilize digital infrastructure and make benefit transfer and government services easy to avail. Though the initiatives for e-governance are well charted out, more initiatives like Mission Karmayogi and mid career training of officers must be implemented to ensure e-governance is more effective.
Q2. “When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself public property.” Discuss this quote in light of phrase that civil service is a service of vocation. (10 marks)
Model Structure
Introduction
- This is a quote by Thomas Jefferson which indicates why an authority, administrator or a ruler should be protected from dispositions and greed of personal aggrandizement and devote his life to public service. To sum up, it sheds light on the spirit of service and foundational values of civil services.
Main Body
- Any public servant of any rank must be full of dedication to public service. Comparing public servants with public property means that officers should provide prompt action when it comes to public service in any situation.
- A service of vocation means effective use of professional skills to serve a community. This service has to be a service of denial i.e a denial of any personal benefits.
- Here, the personal interests are secondary and only public interest prevails.
- This is valued to ensure that there is no conflict of interest and corruption while upholding integrity.
- Negative aspects of public office like corruption, favoritism, crony capitalism and nepotism are prevented.
- An extreme aspect of this is that Plato advocated rulers not to have any family and eliminate their right to property so that personal interest doesn’t come in the way of public interest.
- But human life needs balance and it can’t be a machine. For that, a basic content life with work life balance and hobbies is important.
Conclusion
- Thus it can be concluded that devotion to duty is a must for an efficient and ethical personnel. But while public interest over personal interest is ideal, complete neglect of the personal sphere is impossible.