The government has issued a directive that the public bodies/offices concerned should prepare objective performance indicators for each post within 45 days to link the performance of employees with results.

The government has stated that the performance-related accountability and review system will be implemented within 90 days to eliminate the tendency to treat good and bad performance equally when performance evaluation is weak. The government had made 100 action items public on Friday for governance reform.

According to the action item, the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration will have to prepare quality assurance criteria for services provided by local levels to encourage excellent bodies by making arrangements to certify the quality of services provided by public bodies. Similarly, the government has decided to reduce the number of ministries within 30 days to solve the problem of increasing current expenses due to the number of ministries being larger than necessary. For that, the existing Government of Nepal (Division of Work) Regulations will be amended to keep the number of federal ministries at 17.

In the context of reviewing the number of ministries, if the existing posts have to be managed, the action item states that promotions should be managed in a way that does not affect service delivery. All public bodies should proceed with the process of drafting the necessary amendments to the law to end the situation where service delivery is slow, costly and ineffective due to duplication, complexity and unnecessary processes in service delivery.

The boards, committees, projects and institutional structures under the Government of Nepal that are unproductive, have dual responsibilities and create unnecessary financial burdens will be comprehensively evaluated and abolished, consolidated or restructured. For this, a high-level task force consisting of representatives from the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Supplies and the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration will be formed and the task force has been given a mandate to submit a report with clear recommendations within one month.

According to the agenda, public administration will be made completely free from political interference and made impartial, neutral and accountable to the citizens. The existing trends of corruption, delay and uncomfortable behavior towards service recipients will be improved and the employee code of conduct will be implemented in full to make the bureaucracy accountable, service-oriented, people-oriented and exemplary.

Similarly, the national standards for the organization and management survey of the federal, provincial and local levels will be formulated and approved within 15 days.  The agenda states that arrangements will be made to manage the seat roll registration of teachers and post-retirement service facilities from the provincial education ministry from the coming fiscal year.

The Ministry of Urban Development will formulate minimum standards for the physical infrastructure and standardized layout of government offices within two months and implement them within 100 days. Citizen service centers will be operated in major cities in the 'agency modality' to end the situation where citizens have to visit multiple offices to obtain government services, face procedural hassles, and increase both time and cost, and arrangements will be made to operate such centers for at least 12 hours a day.

To provide citizens with fast, easy and intermediary-free services, all services provided by citizenship, passport, national identity card and district administration offices will be operated through a digital and integrated system. The agenda states that a 24-hour National Citizen Assistance and Grievance Management System will be launched to address citizens' complaints, suggestions and service requests in a fast, effective and result-oriented manner. For this, a multi-channel system will be set up to register complaints through phone, mobile app, portal and social media.