Day 28 – Q 1. How do lack of inter ministerial coordination and sluggish information sharing impede governance? Analyse.
1. How do lack of inter ministerial coordination and sluggish information sharing impede governance? Analyse.
अंतर मंत्रालयी समन्वय और सुस्त सूचना साझाकरण से सुशासन पर किस तरह से कमी आती है? विश्लेषण करें।
Introduction:
Coordination is the mechanism through which policies, strategies, plans, peoples, systems, and tools are brought together to achieve a particular goal. Government services are often cross-sectional, interlinked and complementary particularly in the areas of agriculture, education, trade, and mining. One particular service or service provider functioning improperly will affect the entire system.
Body
Governance is a collaborative effort that requires interconnectedness between the government and various institutions of civil society, as well as within the various departments of the government. Absence of the latter has plagued administration for a long time. The penchant of departments to work in silos, and the absence of a holistic outlook has led to failure in regularly sharing information between different arms of the government. This can cause the following problems:
- Delay in decision making leading to a reactive rather than proactive government. (cross border attacks despite credible information warning so )
- Duplication of effort (multiple deptartment and govt schemes working on same lines, eg Ministry of Panchayati Raj and District Rural Development Agencies). These government initiatives are costly where the blame of problem is put on another department. Such attitude leads to loss of faith in governance and ineffective policy management for benefits of people.
- Wastage of resources (multiple agencies, middle heavy bureaucracy) .
- Failure to institutionalize expertise (Investigative agencies deal with different crimes and doesn’t share info, opposition to National Counter Terrorism Centre etc)
- Capacity building efforts are often duplicated and/or inconsistently applied across ministries. One state employee may receive two or three similar training while another employee receives none.
- Delay in delivery: There is overlapping of procedures like clearances, approvals etc. which takes time and delays delivery of services. Confusion regarding jurisdiction is considered an important bottleneck in enforcement agencies.
Information sharing mechanisms, that ensure two way communication as a matter of routine rather than the norm are required. This will greatly help governance as
- it will ensure more transparency as information will be accessible from any point.
- it will bring more participative governance where every advice from various ministry would be looked after.
- sharing of information reduces delay in implementation of projects.
- it will reduce red tapism and corruption.
- it will lead to more effective implementation of government initiatives
- it will ensure a sense of team work and co-operation among ministries
Problems today are multidimensional in nature (Eg swach bharat has MoRD, MoWR and MoUD involved) that require collaboration to succeed.
Conclusion
Poor coordination is a major obstacle to the effective administration of government services. The steps like:
Parivesh –for single clearance of projects related to the environment,
PRAGATI (Pro-Active Governance And Timely Implementation)- a unique integrating and interactive platform. The platform is aimed at addressing common man’s grievances, and simultaneously monitoring and reviewing important programmes and projects of the Government of India as well as projects flagged by State Governments.
PRAKASH (Power Rail Koyla Availability through Supply Harmony), with a view to improving coordination between the power, coal and railway ministries to ensure coal supplies to power plants
Etc are steps in the right direction.
