Bureaucrats have their way; portal showing attendance record restricted

Bureaucrats appeared to have successfully blocked Narendra Modi government’s attempt to make their attendance record public as part of bringing transparency to the governance system.

Though the public had an unrestricted access to attendance.gov.in for more than a week, the official site has now been password protected.

Bureaucrats have been unhappy about the portal, a governance initiative by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that was unveiled on September 30, and have lobbied against it.

Sources said intense pressure forced authorities to restrict access to the portal.

Officers said letting the public know the log-in and log-out timings of the bureaucrats did not actually serve any purpose, as they explained the logic behind restricting access to the portal.

“How does it help in bringing transparency? Does it serve any purpose to know that an officer has gone on leave for two weeks or two months” a senior official said.

As of now, details of 51,166 employees in 149 departments/ministries in Delhi have been uploaded in the system. The plan is to cover Delhi and move to the rest of the country, the official said.

Record showed that 30,430 government staff attended office on Tuesday. While 3,004 employees were still working at 8.45 pm, that number had fallen to 2,975 ten minutes later. It also revealed that 61.6 per cent of the officers logged-in between 9 and 10 am and 25.3 per cent came to work before 9 am. However, 6.1 per cent came in after 11 am.

The portal remained accessible to public until Sunday morning, but barely 24 hours later on Monday, access to it was restricted.