I&B Ministry officials’ salaries to stay on hold until completion of iGOT online training programme

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Clearance of salary has been linked to the mandatory completion of Integrated Government Online Training (iGOT) courses, with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting issuing an office memorandum on Monday (November 18, 2024) stating that “salary of their officials will be cleared only upon completion of mandatory iGOT courses”.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently launched the 2024 National Learning Week (NLW), also known as Karmayogi Saptah, aimed at developing skills of civil servants in India.

iGOT is an online learning platform that provides training to government employees in India. The platform is part of the Digital India stack and is being developed to enable learning anytime, anywhere, and on any device.

According to the memorandum “all Principal Accounts Offices (PAOs) of Ministry of Information and Broadcasting are directed to clear the salary bills of only those officials who have been certified by the Drawing and Disbursing Officer and Head of Office regarding their completion of mandatory iGOT courses. In other cases, where the certificates are not provided, salary bills may be kept on hold till further orders.’’

According to information released by the Central Government the goal of the programme is to transform the civil services to being more responsive, competent, and future-ready. 

As part of this, several programmes are being offered, including talks by experts from various fields on topics including governance, AI, start-up ecosystems, etc., and programmes fostering collaboration and collective learning. Employees who complete a certain number of courses on the iGOT Karmayogi portal are recognised with the ‘Adarsh Karmayogi Award’.

The Karmayogi Saptah – National Learning Week, was held from October 19 to November 14 as per a Ministry release.

The Central government in its release added that they have received extraordinary response, with a collective commitment from all Ministries, departments, and Civil Service Training Institutes for the programme.

“The event saw a total of 45.4 lakh course enrolments, 32.5 lakh course completions, and an astounding 38.5 lakh hours of learning. In total, 7.45 lakh civil servants participated, with 4.21 lakh completing the target of four hours of competency-linked learning,’’ the release said.