• UGI USER
  • Oct 04, 2023
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Q. A key factor behind poor governance is a system of thinking and working in silos. Discuss in the context of public services in India.

 

Approach

  • Write about the silos mentality in the introduction.
  • Discuss the issues associated with the system of thinking and working in silos in the context of public services in India.
  • State various measures to overcome these issues.
  • Conclude accordingly.

Answer

Governance in India has been marred by the ‘silo mentality’. A silo mentality is defined as a phenomenon where one department is reluctant to share information with other departments of the same organization. Also, the departments do not welcome suggestions as to how they might improve. In 2017, the Prime Minister of India made a call to the bureaucrats to break out of the “silo mentality”, which he said is a “big bottleneck” in the functioning of the government.

Adopting a silos mentality leads to the following issues

  • Impacts organizational efficiency: It prevents flow of information between departments or divisions, which can hamper growth and efficiency.
  • Duplication of work: It results in duplication of effort, lack of synergy and missed opportunities because of informational silos. It also leads to poor decision-making due to a lack of exchange of valuable information between various departments/Ministries.
  • For instance, there is a lack of integration between the Railways, Roads and Shipping Ministries despite the fact that all three Ministries are related to the transportation sector.
  • Similarly, there are three different Ministries in the energy sector—Power, Petroleum and Natural Gas, and Renewable Energy.
  • Slows down organizational growth: It hinders the productivity of departments because of the tendency to focus on their narrow goals at the cost of a broad vision of the organization. Isolated from each other, departments separated by silos often do unnecessary or misaligned work, which prevents agility and adaptability and slows down the organization in general. Departmentalism and functioning in silos in the Ministry of Railways is a well-known example in this regard.
  • Resistance to change and a lack of innovation: If departments do not collaborate, they usually refrain from innovating, as without teamwork and exchange of ideas, it is difficult to get new ideas and perspectives.
  • Lower team morale: A top-down approach associated with siloed working can make the public servants feel like unimportant and disconnected cogs in a very large machine. It adversely affects the organizational work culture, and could lead to high turnover and attrition.

In addition to merging relevant Ministries/Departments as done in the case of the Ministry of Jal Shakti, the following measures can be taken at the intra-Ministerial level to break the silos:

  • Integrated approach: It is necessary to address the contextual issues that are present at the heart of the organizations and consider cooperation, coordination and collaboration for efficient governance.
  • Leadership: The head of the department/Ministry should inspire the public servants to come out of the “my department” mentality and imbibe the “our organization” mentality.
  • Talent pooling: Every member of a department/Ministry has different skills, expertise, and talent. Employees with different ideas, perspectives, and expertise can work together to find innovative solutions utilizing their combined experience, skill and knowledge. This, in turn, allows organizations to solve problems in a faster and more efficient manner.
  • Invest in the right technology stack: There should be focus on the use of technology in order to lay out all of the information in one place for better collaboration.

One of the best ways to break silos and bureaucratic isolationism is to equip the organizations with the right technological tools and make communication between departments/Ministries as seamless as possible.