THE PROCEDURE REQUIRED TO FOLLOW IN THE DECISION MAKING PROCESS, INCLUDING CHANNELS OF SUPERVISION AND ACCOUNTABILITY, BY GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS:--

The legal profession has a public character and all Government departments have specific duties and responsibilities under the respective allocation of business rules issued by the appropriate Government. The constitutional provisions and statutes each department is required to implement are clearly laid down in the allocation of business rules. The manner of disposal of matters assigned to each department/ministry is described in the transaction of business rules. Additionally, every department would have a specific set of schemes and development programmes which they are required to implement directly or through their subordinate offices or other designated Agencies. These documents contain the specific operations that every public authority is required to undertake in the course of implementing the programme or scheme. Every operation mandated under the allocation of business rules read with the transaction of business rules , would be linked to a specific decision-making chain. All Government officers have to follow laid down office procedure manual or the other rules which gives details of how representations, petitions and applications from the citizens must be dealt with. Templates, formats, and basic steps of decision-making are briefly explained in such manuals. These descriptions constitute the elements of decision making processes in general. Additionally, in the routine work and conduct of governance, Government functionaries are required to make decisions in a discretionary manner, but broad guiding principles are laid down in some rule or the other. For example, the General financial rules lay down procedures for a variety of operations relating to Government finances. How sanction must be accorded for incurring expenditure, how losses to Government must be reported, how responsibility for losses may be fixed on any Government servant;how budgets, demand for grants are prepared and submitted, how public Works must be sanctioned and executed, how commodities and services may be procured by a public authority, are all explained in these manuals, which are updated from time to time. The challenge is to present a simplified version of the decision-making procedure that is of  interest to a common citizen. This design of presentation should be extended to cover all statutory and discretionary operations that are part of the public authority's mandate under the allocation of business read with the transaction of business rules. In the event of a public authority altering an existing decision-making process or adopting an entirely new process, such changes must be explained in simple language in order to enable people to easily understand the changes made :-- Er Fateh Chand Guleria, Director RTI, Welfare Association, registered number HPCD, 3552 , Bilaspur Himachal pradesh phone number 9459334377