PM to give away maiden Excellence in Administration award

New Delhi, Apr 20 (UNI) Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will present the maiden ''PM Award for Excellence in Public Administration'' here tomorrow on the occasion of the second Civil Services Day.

Karnataka and Nagaland will receive the awards for 2005-06 in recognition of best practices followed by them in public administration.

The theme of the Civil Services Day this year is ''Best Practices.'' The award, instituted last year, is to acknowledge the outstanding and exemplary performance of civil servants, sources at the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) said.

The nominations considered for award were related to: implementation of innovative schemes and projects, bringing in perceptible systemic changes and building up institutions, making public delivery systems efficient and corruption free, showing innovation and adaptation to meet the stakeholders' requirements, extraordinary performance in emergent situations like floods, earthquakes, etc, and setting high standards of services and continued improvements, showing high leadership quality and improving employee motivation.

On the occasion, Prime Minister Singh will inaugurate an exhibition on the 'Best Practices.' In all 12 Best Practices and eight other initiatives are being showcased.

Dr Singh will also release a book on the Best Practices titled ''Learn from Them'' compiled by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances. The book has covered various initiatives taken by the innovators across the country.

These articles cover a wide range of areas like e-governance, information technology, tribal development strategies, problems of street and destitute children, computerisation of land records and urban governance innovations.

In the post-lunch session two panel discussions will be organised one on ''Realising Human Resource Potential,'' to be chaired by Prime Minister's Principal Secretary T K A Nair, and another on ''Governance challenges in Resurgent India'' this would be chaired by the Cabinet Secretary Shri B K Chaturvedi.

The Civil Services Day is observed by all the Central Civil Services to rededicate and recommit themselves to the cause of the people. It provides a unique opportunity for introspection as also chalking out future strategy to deal with the challenges being posed by the changing times.

UNI