Good intent, bad effect

Need to build govt capacity to supplement consultants' role

The government’s decision to introduce a centralised system for appointing consultants from multilateral agencies in all ministries and in the NITI Aayog could be an example of faulty implementation of sensible ideas. A clear delineation of the role of consultants does seem necessary given that the Central Vigilance Commission has stated that the scope of work entrusted to consultants is often not defined properly, or they are allowed to “experiment with impractical ideas resulting in unwarranted costs”. Replying to a recent RTI (Right to Information) application, the health ministry said it had 363 consultants and a large number of them were being paid by health-related international agencies as well as external aid agencies. It is not clear if there are issues of conflict of interest in such appointments. There is also the commonly held belief that some ministries indeed play fast and loose with taxpayers’ money in their use of consultants.

This is not to say that consultants aren’t required. They are an important source of specialist skills for ministries and departments that need to transform how they operate – especially in a situation where such capabilities are in short supply within the bureaucracy. Governments all over the world use consultants for highly specialised projects – only last week, the Singapore government appointed six business leaders as consultants to lend their corporate and professional expertise to a government-to-government project with China in the areas of services, aviation, transport and information and communications technology. Critics of consultants in ministries also often ignore the value they deliver by helping to transform government services and drive massive efficiency savings.

The government’s new rules state that consultants cannot be hired for policy formulation, and their role would be confined to presentation and analysis of possible options with the help of supporting data. This is meant to prevent embarrassing cases of some of the government’s new rules being cut and pasted from consultants’ websites. But the line between policy “formulation” and “possible options” for policy is thin, and difficult to monitor. Certainly, where the government’s recent instruction erred is in the belief that a centralised screening panel would be a panacea for all the ills. On the contrary, it could slow things down unnecessarily. Also, the decision to terminate the appointment of all consultants whose tenure was up to the end of December 2015 is a typical bureaucratic response to an issue which required careful handling. Given the useful role many consultants play, such an arbitrary decision ignores the reality that a period of hand-holding was required to ensure that the transition to a new system becomes seamless. What was required was making ministries accountable for the job their consultants do in the form of clear deliverables and keeping records of the tasks accomplished vis-à-vis the targets. The terms of reference and procedure of appointment of these consultants also have to be transparent and unambiguous. Most importantly, the government must realise that to reduce this over-reliance on external consultants, it is important to have in place proper manpower planning that can help recruit and retain permanent employees with the right skills at the right time. The larger problem of state incapacity must be addressed urgently.