The idea behind the Governance Knowledge Centre (GKC)

“A remarkable movement to reform public management has swept the globe” ( Donald Kettl 2005:1) In UK it was christened as ‘New Public Management’ by Christopher Hoods (1991) while it was referred to as ‘Reinventing Government’ in USA. Its focus has been a development of performance oriented government with greater accountability, transparency and emphasis on production and delivery of services to ordinary people. In India this has reemerged as an ‘Administrative Reforms’ movement starting from the Fifth Pay Commission to the setting of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission and Administrative Reforms Reports.

Whatever may be the label, this new direction towards a slim but a speedier, more participatory and open bureaucracy has energized governance but has also placed many challenges before it. New demands of knowledge, information and experience has struck the offices of erstwhile administration not prepared to answer pesky questions from citizens. GKC is expected to be the lighthouse for capacity building in administrative management.

Most studies put up on this GKC website are small experiments in governance which can be replicated and introduced in other regions of the country. It is an effort to address the present confinement and isolation of implementers to their specific areas while the world has been offering many more innovative ideas. Administrators are generally bereft of scientific and empirically tested information on innovations in governance even though they constantly need literature from other regions where some solutions have been attempted by someone and have borne substantially good results. Hence GKC replaces populist approach to implementation by a more scientific one.

Who would capture the global change?
Change is everywhere, business, government, educational institutions, community organizations, non-government functions and even the state security organizations. Change is deepening, speeding and spreading. It is contagious and has affected every section of society, every level of government , every culture and every continent. Wise are those who deal with change as a personal assignment, with energetic commitment to gain control over the change. Organizations which refuse to change or change hesitatingly increase their problems and may fail to survive in this era of instability . Hence GKC intends to help organizations to ride the winds of change, seizing opportunities and sail past the tough times through their preparedness and ability to shed rigidity which may in these times prove a fatal stance. The big question faced by the administrative machinery of India is ‘Can we wait for the change to blow over or we got to learn to work even in the storm’. GKC helps administrators to pull up their socks and climb the walls of the pyramid to take note of what is happening around them.

Change is continuous! The administrative world has changed significantly in the last decade and a half. There is a continuous effort to come close to scientific management in governance. Departments have been trying to solve their problems by introducing some new idea for better management. To go back in history and excavate such information becomes difficult as this has not been documented anywhere. For example the Posts and Telegraph Department in India introduced the Postal Index Number in the mid seventies and this not only paved the way for greater accountability and scientific distribution of postal services but also a speed delivery. From PIN codes to ATM machines lives of ordinary people has been touched by P & T as well as Banking services. In the last decade and a half many other departments have walked a little further to introduce ideas to implement services provided by the District Magistrates offices. Few regions such as Bundelkhand , Purba Midinapore , Bangalore City and Godhara new partnerships between government, people’s voluntary groups, NGOs and technology providers have emerged to encounter issues of service delivery as a result of which the middle men have been replaced by an entrepreneurial individual who was earlier never even noticed for having this potential. GKC is an evaluation process of all such initiatives and innovations to help those who constantly feel that they are standing at the corner of the WALK and are NOT ABLE TO WALK.

Thus GKC is ultimately about Capacity Building of implementers who are expected to deliver despite infrastructural, financial and manpower constraints.