"Professionalism is a state of mind. As Gandhiji used to say “we must endeavour to be the change that we want to see”. To encourage such professionalism, the civil services require a renewed commitment to knowledge. We live in a knowledge based society. Modern firms often value the intellectual capital of their professionals as part of the net worth of the company. People make institutions. We must therefore invest more in opportunities that enhance the knowledge base of our civil services. Our Government has renewed such commitment to knowledge through the efforts of the Department of Personnel in strengthening training programmes for the civil services”.
- Hon'ble Prime Minister in his speech on
the Civil Service Day, 21st April 2008
The Training Division of the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) has initiated an effort to develop a model(s) for large scale training of frontline service delivery to achieve the objectives of the National Training Policy. The project is funded under the Capacity Building of Poverty Reduction Programme being managed by Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances, Ministry of Personnel and supported by DFID, Government of UK. The project is nomenclatured as “Training Initiative under the CBPR Programme”.
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The basic premise of the training initiative is that public service delivery is significantly a function of the quality of the people across the service delivery chain. This is primarily dependent upon knowledge skill and attitude of these personnel. The incidence of training is significantly low at the frontline levels of the civil service, a fact acknowledged by the National Training Policy in its vision "training for all". While there is a felt need for training these personnel, till date there has been no such systematic initiative in the country. The number of personnel to be trained and heterogeneity of the tasks they perform makes the designing and implementing of a suitable training programme an extremely complex endeavour Under the Training Initiative of the CBPR Program, attempt is being made to develop trg models for frontline personnel which are scalable, cost effective and transferable and thereby capable of being used with marginal changes across the country. Training Division DoPT alongwith State Administrative Training Institutes are implementing training pilots and lessons from the same would be assimilated to come up with pan India models
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The Department of Personnel and Training in collaboration with the State ATIs is developing the model for large scale training of frontline service delivery personnel. The pilots are being implemented in all mainland states. A structured approach was adopted in rolling out the model. This included: (i) Developing the working model (which was generic and unique for the whole project), (ii) setting the framework- key variables which are not negotiable include- trainees to be frontline service delivery personnel and sector selected to be pro-poor, (iii) ATIs given full autonomy to innovate within the prescribed framework, (iv) Supporting institutional arrangements setup- National Documentation Center at Yashada for collation and dissemination of material prepared by various ATIs under the project , technical backstopping from Adam Smith International , MoU signed with each ATI- clearly defined purpose and deliverables, (vi) Close monitoring of the ATIs, (vii) experience sharing through workshops at regional and national level.
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The training pilots were launched in phases and at present pilots are being undertaken in all mainland States. While conscious decision was taken on not going for numbers but to concentrate on developing models/approaches for training frontline service delivery personnel, the numbers of trainers produced and trainees trained is impressive and validates the robustness of the approaches being developed. Till date the number of trainers trained is 1769, the trainees trained is 19161 and the sectors covered is 24. Since the launch of training pilots was staggered across various states, ATIs are in various stages of completion of the pilots.
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Within the broad framework suggested by the Training Division, significant leverage was given to the ATIs to innovate during pilot implementation. Given that front line service delivery training for such large number has never been attempted at such a scale, there were no experiences to fall back upon during the during the project design phase. Since the models were to be developed from scratch, it was felt that new ideas and processes would emerge during implementation if ATIs are given lots of leverage to try out new ideas. It is needless to say that ATIs have stood up to this challenge; some of the innovations are showcased in the link provided on this page.
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While the Pilot training projects are still under implementation in various states, there are a number of generic lessons which are discernible. These early lessons indicate that there has been a paradigm shift in the way the ATIs have positioned themselves vis-Aÿ-vis the regular training programmes which they undertake. One significant aspect has been that the ATIs have emerged as manager and knowledge provider while the actual on ground training was provided through a pool of trainers comprising of personnel drawn from the target departments. Also significant has been the close coordination with target departments heads, specialized modules, introduction of life space aspects, convergence of cadres for a sector in training, significant field training components ,creation of a cadre of barefoot trainers. This project has demonstrated that large scale and good quality training of service delivery personnel (estimated at about 10 million across the country) is possible within the ambit of the existing government system.
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