The story behind the `18-cr biometric attendance system
IN THE DARK Finance, personnel ministries were kept out of the loop on the decision taken by the PMO at a review meeting of the IT dept
NEW DELHI: A panel of top civil servants had held back its approval to quickly introduce the biometric attendance system in July last year but fell in line after the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) cleared the initiative a few days later, according to official documents accessed by HT.
Also, the department of personnel and training (DoPT) that acts as the government’s human resource manager, and the finance ministry, which scrutinises expenditure plans, were out of the loop on the decision taken by the PMO at a review meeting of the department of information technology.
When DoPT secretary Sanjay Kothari was told that the biometric system would be rolled out a week later on September 15, 2014, he was taken aback. He asked his officials to ascertain if the committee of secretaries (CoS) had cleared the system at its July 15, 2014, meeting.
It had not.
But it transpired that then IT secretary RS Sharma had successfully pitched the introduction of the Aadhaar-based biometric attendance system at a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi a month earlier. It was at the same meeting that the concept of Digital India was conceived.
Also, the IT department and the Unique Identification Authority of India that issues Aadhaar numbers decided to spare `18 crore from its own resources over a three-year period to fund it.
As a result, the project was never really scrutinised by the finance ministry.
The CoS did get to discuss the project in October but this was only to smooth out the rough edges as far as possible.
A DoPT concession to employees in 1988 that required the government to consult them before introducing new technology, too, was ignored.
The Aadhaar-based biometric attendance system was eventually made mandatory for government employees from December 31 in Delhi, and from January 26 in the rest of the country.
It is a deadline that has been quietly allowed to lapse without insisting on compliance. KKN Kutty, president of the Confederation of Central Government Employees, told HT that they supported strict enforcement of punctuality norms in public-dealing offices. But in others, he said, it was more important that employees did their job well rather than be at their desks before 9am.
THE SYSTEM WAS MADE MANDATORY FOR GOVT EMPLOYEES FROM DEC 31 IN DELHI AND JAN 26 IN
THE COUNTRY