New Cabinet Secretary T V Somanathan (IAS:1987:TN) seems to be on a reformation spree. After introducing open house system to meet officers for urgent work, he has now discontinued the age-old practice of sending periodic demi-official, or DO, letters by secretaries to the Cabinet Secretariat. This practice was started during Nehru period as a tool to keep the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) informed about “significant happenings” in their respective ministries.
But the advent of digital tools, such as the government’s E-Samiksha mechanism, such DO letters had become obsolete losing its purpose and effectiveness as letters often became uselessly voluminous. So, Somanathan re-assessed the mechanism and asked secretaries to discontinue the practice and “send a very brief monthly letter of one or, at most, two pages”, instead.
The Cabinet Secretary issued his order through a memo to secretaries on October 24, discontinuing this practice. Somanathan stated in his memo that the DO letter has undergone changes, including its periodicity, from weekly to fortnightly to monthly, as well as in its content and focus in tune with the requirements of the day.
He added that what was initially envisaged to be a brief personal note from the secretary turned into a plethora of information, data, and details which served no purpose besides being voluminous. Somanathan added that the Cabinet Secretariat has undertaken an exercise to develop department-specific formats capturing key controllable parameters, indicators, and metrics relating to each ministry and department.
According to him, now these letters will contain policy and other matters pending due to prolonged inter-ministerial consultations that the secretaries wish to bring to his notice. The monthly DO letters could also include proposals pending for long in the Cabinet Secretariat or the PMO.
