Performance of senior IAS, IPS and Indian Forest Service officers is no longer dependent on their annual confidential reports. Instead, expert panels formed under the Union home ministry and the Department of training and personnel (DoPT) have thrashed out a system to assess senior officers who will be serving at the Centre through a secret 360-degree check.
“It is called the 360-degree check because independent assessments are being carried out for every officer based on seven parameters which are rated on a scale of 1-5,” said an official familiar with the process.
For Indian Police Service (IPS) officers, the expert panel consists of five retired officers under the ministry of home affairs while IAS and Indian Forest Service officers are being selected by an expert panel under DoPT.
Under the lens are IPS officers belonging to the rank of DIG and above, and IAS officers in the post of joint secretary for empanelment at the Centre .
Sources explained that once a list of officers eligible for empanelment is placed before the expert panel, each member of the panel carries out a general inquiry by talking to various sources , senior officers , juniors, batchmates and other public figures to assess the candidate.
This inquiry is secretive in nature and largely focusses on seven attributes of an officer— attitude towards work, ability to handle additional responsibility , domain knowledge , relationship with peers and public , proficiency or skill set, integrity and overall suitability for the job.
Sources said each member talks to at least one or two such sources which adds up to around 10 independent assessments placed before the panel which recommends a final pool of officers for empanelment to the select committee. The select committee consists of the Cabinet secretary, union Home Secretary, director of intelligence bureau and others in case of IPS officers who take a final call.
The attributes and parameters are the same when it comes to the selection of IAS and IFoS officers.
According to sources , 30-35 per cent officers get empanelled from each batch every year. However, this selection process has a scope for review. If any officer feels he has been denied a chance, he can approach a review committee , which again consists of five retired officers , who follow a similar process of carrying out a 360 degree check . The final names are then placed before the select committee once again for a decision. However, the process of review is available only once.
Government officials said the new system has made the selection procedure multi-layered and robust, leaving little scope for talented officers to be left out in the cold and undeserving candidates bagging crucial posts.
The Centre’s litmus test for officers is also serving a larger goal of bringing together a mixed pool of officers from different services who can serve as domain experts, breaking the monopoly of IAS officers over key positions in central government.
Shekhar Singh, former adviser in Planning Commission, said there was an urgent need to end the domination of any single service and focus on the vast talent and expertise available in all areas of public administration across the country.
This attempt is also going hand in hand with another effort of the government to draw young officers to the Centre to serve in junior positions to give them exposure to New Delhi’s central ministries, departments and agencies besides filling up vacancies.
“The traditional practice of young officers preferring to serve in their cadres is being broken after the MHA and DoPT have reinforced the guidelines for mandatory central deputation to make them eligible for holding senior positions at the Centre at a later stage,” said a government official.
“There was a time when politicians needed to be briefed by officers who were generalists,” said the official. Shekar explained that as new challenges emerge, there is an increase in demand for experts who can perform specialised roles in the government whether it is telecom, power, information technology, cyber security, health and so on.
Singh, who has served as a faculty at Indian Institute of Public Administration, said the fresh changes being brought in by the government is also keeping officers serving in states as well as the Centre on their toes.
But there are anomalies that continue to exist. A senior forest service officer pointed out that empanelment of IAS officers still precedes all other services and at times, there is a gap of two years before an IPS officer of the same batch gets empanelled. This discrepancy needs to be removed , he said . Secondly , even though ACR reports are no longer the final factor in deciding the proficiency of an officer to serve at the Centre, these reports are not confidential anymore as they are shared with the officer after the final stage of assessment is over .
This has led to ACR reports being written in a manner that do not ruffle too many feathers.
“When senior officers are aware that their assessment will be shared , normally the tone is milder and the assessment becomes same across the board for all officers, which makes the process less efficient,” said a senior official.
Despite the pros and cons in the new evaluation system, a race has begun among all India service officers either to grab a chance to serve at the Centre or hone their skills to qualify the seven point criteria.