The Capacity Building Commission (CBC), constituted by the government three years ago, has developed the Karmayogi Competency Model for civil servants, which is a framework of behavioural and functional competencies designed to aid their transition from a karmachari (employee) to a karmayogi (dedicated worker).
Inspired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Mann Ki Baat programme and his public speeches and statements, the model aims to optimise deployment of officials to roles based on their competencies, which are also mapped to courses on the Integrated Government Online Training (iGOT) portal.
“We looked at what the PM said. We go by the decisions of the government of the day and what the chief executive talks about. We didn’t want to just go by mapping out something. We did a large language model (LLM) analysis of all his Mann Ki Baat episodes, speeches, tweets, etc.,” R Balasubramaniam, Member (Human Resource), CBC, said.
The model draws inspiration from four resolutions that “every public official should embody”, namely vikas (development), garva (pride), kartavya (duty) and ekta (unity), which were all distilled from Prime Minister Modi’s speeches as recurrent themes, he said.
The model consists of 34 competencies, of which 13 are categorised as ‘behavioural’ and are further split between ‘core’ and ‘leadership’ competencies. These include self-awareness, personal effectiveness, creativity and innovation, and strategic leadership.
The remaining 21 competencies are categorised as ‘functional’, which include citizen centricity, policy architecture, digital fluency, financial management and data analytics.
With the role of governance evolving and black swan events increasing, the model has been designed to ensure accountability among civil servants and to enhance performance, citizen-centric and tech-enabled governance, and future readiness.
“The expectation of a civil servant today is no longer like in the past, where you just deliver on schemes and programmes. Today, the PM’s call has been to build a bureaucracy in which the mindset transitions from feeling and acting like a karmachari or a public servant, to behaving like a karmayogi, where he does service without any expectation in return,” Balasubramaniam told The Indian Express.
Soon, government employees will undergo a proctored assessment of their competencies, based on which an algorithm will recommend them courses on iGOT. Completion of courses on iGOT, which are now mapped to competencies, will also be tracked by seniors.
“The moment I finish a course, my certificate gets downloaded and gets tagged to e-HRMS (Human Resource Management System). So I, as the boss of my division, can see all my employees, what competencies they have. I can encourage them to do (courses),” Balasubramaniam said.
Presently, government employees are mandated to complete a minimum of 50 hours of training on iGOT each year.
ExplainedKarmachari to karmayogi
According to the CBC, it is responding to the Prime Minister’s call to build a bureaucracy in which the mindset transitions from feeling and acting like a karmachari or a public servant to behaving like a karmayogi where service is done without any expectation in return.
According to Balasubramaniam, civil servants’ competencies assessed through the model will determine the kind of jobs they do. At the same time, they will be able to use the iGOT portal to quickly acquire competencies at their job, which could involve a new programme that requires upskilling.
The Karmayogi Competency Model was developed through primary and secondary research, extensive stakeholder engagement, “including representatives from the public and private sectors, academia, and experts in Indian Knowledge Systems”, and a process of global benchmarking against competency models developed by Australia, Singapore, and South Korea.
At the moment, the model is for civil servants employed with the Central government and with some states like Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh that have also signed up.
The CBC was established in April 2021 and is uniquely staffed with representation from the private sector, the civil society, and the IAS. Former McKinsey India head Adil Zainulbhai is its Chairperson, civil society veteran Balasubramaniam is Member (HR) and former CMD of ONGC Alka Mittal is Member (Administration).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi 
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