Bureaucracy’s digital challenge

Syllabus: General Studies paper 2

Context:

The biggest challenge today to Indian bureaucracy is the shift from desk to digital. 

• This shift is not limited to a transition towards e-office and e-governance but includes the organisational and bureaucratic response to digital spaces, especially the use of social media. 
• The focus has been mostly on the former, while the latter has remained largely unaddressed.

Arguments for bureaucrats using social media

• The use of social media is gradually getting institutionalised in many Westminster system-based countries. 
  • During the Brexit debate in the U.K., many civil servants shaped public debate through the use of social media even while remaining politically neutral. 
• Many civil servants have become accessible to the common people and public service delivery issues have been resolved through the use of social media. 
• Social media has also created a positive outlook towards an institution long perceived as opaque and inaccessible. 
• Social media has increased awareness among people about government policies and programmes.
• Social media is becoming effective in dealing with cyber-crime, and in delivering social good.
• It provides an opportunity for bureaucrats to shape the public discourse and engage with the public while being politically neutral. 
• Social media ensures that blind obeying political executive is minimised and bureaucrats serve the people.
• Anonymity has been a hallmark of Westminster bureaucracies, including in India. But governance in public is now the new normal. 
  • Values are becoming more dominant than facts in public policymaking. And both values and facts are getting reshaped due to fake news and systematic propaganda within public policy circles as well. 
  • In such a scenario, the bureaucracy, which is expected to be the epitome of public values and a storehouse of facts, shouldn’t be expected to govern in private.
• Social media is critical for bureaucrats to equip themselves against the menace of misinformation and disinformation.

Arguments against bureaucrats using social media

• Anonymity is the defining feature of Indian bureaucracy and gets compromised while using social media.
  • Anonymity and opaqueness have already been watered down through the Right to Information Act of 2005. But they continue to be prominent features.
• As an organisational form, the bureaucracy is incompatible with social media. While bureaucracy is characterised by hierarchy, formal relationships and standard procedures, social media is identified by openness, transparency and flexibility.
• Accessibility and accountability: In India, social media is getting used by civil servants for self-promotion. Through their selective posts and promotion of these posts by their social media fans, civil servants create a narrative of their performance. All this is justified in the name of accessibility and accountability. 
  • Social media may have improved accessibility and accountability, but it is important to note that civil servants are at an advantage to share the information they want and respond to those they want. 
  • Social media accountability is no alternative to institutional and citizen-centric accountability. It is partly unethical to use social media during office hours and justify it when some people who have travelled long distances are waiting outside the office.

Bureaucrats should use social media to improve public policies. If they don’t use social media appropriately, their role as independent advisers stands threatened.

The Hindu Link:

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/bureaucracys-digital-challenge/article36724341.ece

Question: How can social media help in ensuring good governance?