Go for ISO certification for administration & governance, government departments told

NEW DELHI: Stressing that chief minister’s office of Gujarat under Narendra Modi has already achieved an ISO-9001 certification for “administration and overall governance”, the Cabinet Secretariat is planning a renewed push to what was UPA’s brain-child of aiming for the prestigious global certification for all central government departments. The Cabinet Secretariat recently impressed upon all government departments that the chief minister’s office in Gujarat had already achieved the ISO-9001 certification way back in 2009 during the tenure of Narendra Modi as chief minister.

This was after the Gujarat CMO was audited by a third party for performance standards. The certification for the CMO is valid till January 15, 2014, after which a re-certification process will be undertaken by a third-party audit. Only four central ministries or departments earned an ISO-9001 certification in the UPA tenure.

They are Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), Ministry of Steel, Defence Research and Development Organisation and Department of Agricultural Research. A government official said UPA started the exercise in 2011 by including implementation of ISO-9001 certification in the results-framework document (RFD) for the year 2011-2012 but the results were “far from satisfactory”.

The new government now plans to push all government departments to get the prestigious global certification soon. The government official termed the prime minister’s moves to ensure cleanliness in government offices, usage of technology and fixing deadlines for work delivery, as part of preparing the government departments to achieve ISO-9001 certification.

“This will ensure the new government can claim that it has achieved a benchmark on performance standards. All ministries and departments are being asked to promptly engage a certification agency to help them apply for ISO-9001,” the government official said. The government departments will have to overhaul their working style and systems to impress the International Organisation for Standardisation in Geneva that coordinates the ISO-9001 certification which is a generic quality management system and codifies quality standards in every area of organisation‘s functioning.