PM announces "Agents of Change" to engineer reform in govt

New Delhi, Apr 21 (UNI) Observing that the present "creaking system" of administration cannot go on, Prime Minister Manmohan today announced that the government would appoint "Agents of Change" to catalyse process reform initiatives.

"The agents would be public oriented personnel of outstanding calibre and would be strategically located to engineer reform," he said while inaugurating the second "Civil Service Day," attended by about 500 bureaucrats.

"I already see a stress and strain in many areas of governance and wonder how much longer a creaking system can go on." Dr Singh said since reform in government was time consuming, a proposal was being prepared for appointing "Agents of Change " to achieve visible results in a short time frame.

"We need to design ways in which we can re-engineer government processes - just as our private sector has re-engineered itself to become world class," the Prime Minister said, pointing out that the proposed agents of change would be free from departmental baggage and work on a full-time basis within the system to deliver results.

"Very often, the most difficult area of reform in government is process and procedural reform. No amount of investment in capabilities and technologies can improve performance and service delivery beyond a point if we continue to be prisoners of archaic procedures and processes," he said.

Dr Singh regretted that policy reform measures did not deliver the desired outcomes because of lack of forward movement in reform of government processes, and said this gave rise to Inspector Raj.

"This is what makes the interface of a common citizen with government a cumbersome and daunting affairs...This is often the root cause of corruption as well. When I meet individuals or industrialists, it is this aspect of government which is crying out for change.' MORE UNI