Government Mandates Performance Metrics and Overhauls Bureaucracy in Governance Reform Agenda

Kathmandu. The government has issued a directive requiring public bodies/offices to prepare objective performance indicators for the job description of every position within 45 days to link employee performance with results.

The government has announced that a responsibility and review system linked to performance will be implemented within 90 days to eliminate the tendency to treat good and poor performance equally when performance evaluation is weak. The government unveiled a one-hundred-point agenda for governance reform on Friday.

According to the agenda, the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration must prepare standards for certifying the quality of services provided by local levels within 45 days to certify the quality of services of public bodies and encourage the best performing ones.

Similarly, to resolve the issue of increased recurrent expenditure due to the number of ministries being larger than necessary, the government has decided to reduce the number of ministries within 30 days. For this, the existing Government of Nepal (Division of Work) Regulations will be amended to fix the number of federal ministries at 17.

The agenda mentions that in the context of reviewing the number of ministries, promotion management must be done in a way that does not affect service delivery, even if the currently existing positions need to be managed. All public bodies must initiate the process of drafting necessary legal amendments to end the situation where service delivery is slow, expensive, and ineffective due to existing duplication, complexity, and unnecessary procedures in service delivery.

All unproductive, overlapping, and unnecessarily financially burdensome boards, committees, projects, and institutional structures under the Government of Nepal will be evaluated comprehensively and either abolished, merged, or restructured.

For this purpose, a high-level task force comprising representatives from the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Supplies, and the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration has been formed, and this task force has been mandated to submit a report with clear recommendations within one month.

According to the agenda, the public administration will be made completely free from political interference, impartial, neutral, and accountable to the citizens. The employee code of conduct will be implemented verbatim to make the bureaucracy accountable, service-oriented, public-friendly, and exemplary by reforming existing tendencies such as corruption, delays, and inconvenient behavior towards service recipients.

Likewise, the national standard for organization and management survey of the federal, provincial, and local levels will be drafted and approved within 15 days. The management of teacher seat roll registration and post-retirement benefits will be arranged to be handled by the provincial ministry looking after education from the next fiscal year, as mentioned in the agenda.

The Ministry of Urban Development will draft minimum standards within two months for the physical infrastructure and standardized layout of government offices, which will be implemented within 100 days. To end the situation where citizens have to visit many offices, endure procedural hassles, and incur both increased time and cost to obtain government services, 'Agencyfication Modality' citizen service centers will be operated in major cities, and these centers will be arranged to operate for at least 12 hours daily.

To provide citizens with fast, easy, and broker-free services, all services provided by the District Administration Office, including citizenship, passport, and national identity card, will be operated through a digital and integrated system.

The agenda mentions the operation of a 24-hour National Citizen Assistance and Grievance Management System to address citizens' complaints, suggestions, and service requests quickly, effectively, and result-oriented. For this, a multi-channel system will be arranged for registering grievances via phone, mobile app, portal, and social media.

With the objective of delivering government services to homes, the government plans to modernize the postal service and develop it as a 'Government Courier Service'. Through this, the arrangement to deliver government documents/materials such as passports, citizenship copies, and licenses to homes will be implemented within 100 days.