Incentives for babus linked to attendance

This could be the end of French leaves in the government.

This could be the end of French leaves in the government.

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Anxious to discipline babudom, the government has made it mandatory for all departments to install biometric access control system to qualify for performance-linked incentives.

The Committee of Secretaries (CoS) headed by cabinet secretary KM Chandrasekhar cleared performance-linked incentives for about 60 departments earlier this month that have joined the performance evaluation system.

Besides a minimum performance rating of 70%, the CoS has introduced a condition that departments implement the biometric attendance system to be eligible for the incentives.

The incentive scheme will be funded from savings of administrative expenditure made by the departments concerned.

"Initially, for every rupee saved by the department, it could be allowed to distribute up to 15 paisa depending on its performance," a senior government official said, pointing that the biometric system would help reduce the overtime allowance by recording when government servants leave work.

The home ministry was the first central department to go for a high-profile launch of the biometric system, primarily due to home minister P Chidambaram driving the project and marking himself too on the biometric access control system.

At the ministry, the biometric system not only led to employees reaching office on time or risking being marked on half-day leave but also prevented employees from playing truant.

That the cabinet secretariat had also gone for the biometric system and found it useful to end fudging of records for overtime allowance and improving attendance monitoring ensured that the automated system had supporters within the CoS .

The incentives paid to the secretaries would depend on departmental performance reflected in the Results-Framework Document (document that lists the department’s targets for the year). Incentives for junior employees will depend on their individual performance.