Annual Capacity Building Plan

Mission Karmayogi, or the National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building, aims to bring comprehensive reform to the existing capacity building framework at both, the individual and organisational level for efficient public service delivery. To achieve this objective, the Capacity Building Commission (CBC) was constituted in April 2021 – it aims to drive the standardisation and harmonisation of capacity building efforts across the Indian civil services landscape. One of the CBC’s key mandates is to support the creation of Annual Capacity Building Plans for all MDOs, by first identifying the capacity needs of the MDO, and then recommending suitable interventions to bridge the identified needs.

Civil servants are an important part of the Indian state – they are both the agents of policymaking and the executive hand that delivers on the ground. Given their indisputable role in the state machinery, it has become crucial to centre the discussion on the officials, to conduct a detailed capacity needs’ analysis, and to help define both individual and organisational capacity building objectives. As part of this, MDOs must be introduced to Mission Karmayogi’s vision and the mandate of the CBC. They must then be assisted in identifying their capacity requirements, appropriate training and organisational interventions, and logistical requirements to meet those needs.

The Annual Capacity Building Plan (ACBP) is the roadmap using which every MDO will build the capacity of its individual officials as well as that of the MDO as a whole. The end goal of this exercise is to aid the MDO in performing its mandate more effectively. This will be accomplished by focusing on three key priority areas or lenses -

• Contribution to National Priorities: This lens looks at how MDO contributes to National Priorities. National Priorities include goals such as the creation of a $5-trillion economy and the adoption of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
• Ability to assess emerging technologies: This lens examines the potential impact and challenges posed by key technological trends emerging in the relevant sector in which the MDO operates. It then evaluates the MDO's ability to optimally regulate these technologies, capitalising on the potential impact while mitigating identified challenges.
• Citizen-centricity: This lens examines the MDO’s day-to-day operations, with an aim to augment citizen-centricity, customer serviceability, the Prime Minister’s vision of Ease of living and ease of doing business.

Capacity building at the individual level:

This entails the process of equipping individuals in a ministry, department or organisation with the required competencies for their job. Competencies are a combination of the attitudes, knowledge, and skills that enable an individual to perform a job or task effectively.

MDOs will carry out a 2-step process to determine individual capacity building needs –

1. Deconstruct the position of an individual officials and list their roles, activities and associated competencies
2. Assess the individual official on the associated competencies to identify competency gaps (if any)

Once the competency gaps of individuals have been identified, they will be bridged through training interventions like a course in noting and drafting designed by a Central Training Institute (CTI), or an immersion programme designed by a ministry to familiarise staff with its day-to-day operations.

Capacity building at the organisational Level:

This refers to the process of building the capacity of collective and shared aspects of the organisation that enable it to achieve its goals.

The shared aspects can be understood along the five dimensions of organisational capacity building -

Technology and data: This dimension deals with the technology employed by MDOs to improve its functioning as well as to keep up with the latest developments in the industry/sector that the ministry operates in.

Systems and Processes: This dimension includes all the established procedures of MDOs to carry out its day-to-day functions like knowledge management and organisational analysis.

Resources and assets: This dimension includes the hard and soft infrastructure that MDOs use for their day-to-day functioning.

Partnerships and relationships: This dimension includes MDOs’ external partnerships like those with other ministries/departments, global organisations and citizen groups.

Personnel Management: This dimension includes all the functions and processes associated with managing the MDOs’ human resources.

Once the MDO has identified its organisational capacity needs along the aspects mentioned above, they will be bridged through organisational interventions like development of a knowledge management system for an MDO, or procurement of a data-visualisation tool to aid data-informed decision making.