Directorates

The council of ministers is made up of political leaders who are not expected to perform the administrative functions by themselves. Any public administration system includes various components in a hierarchy with the concern of achieving the final goals of governance. The goals go through the components and these components hold distributed responsibilities and they are required to perform them to help the government to achieve the goals. The directorate in any administration system, such as the directorate of income tax, is the executive agency that is responsible for achieving the policies and execution that are defined by the secretariat. 

Directorates 

We can define the directorates as the important organ of the government which mainly aims to execute the policies that are framed and designed by the secretariat of the system. We can say that the directorates are responsible for translating policies into action and we can also call them executive agencies. When we talk about the hierarchy of a system that starts with any ministry, the directorate comes at level 3. The hierarchy starts with the ministry and goes through the secretariat, and finally reaches the directorate. After the directorate, such a hierarchy includes many sub-departments.  

Types of directorates 

We can categorise the directorates into two categories:

Visit to know more about UPSC Exam Pattern

Attached offices

These are responsible for providing directions for the execution of policies. Policies are provided by the ministry to which directorates belong. In some conditions, we can also consider these directorates as the data centre of the ministry. Using these data repository attached offices provides suggestions to the ministry.

Subordinate offices

These are responsible for applying the policies on the ground. These offices work for detailed execution of the policies defined by the government and execution planning done by the attached office.

It can be said that the attached offices are aimed to perform two tasks: one is using the data and technologies advising the belonging ministry; the second is to define the ways of execution of the policies.  Subordinate offices take the strategies from the attached offices and execute them on the ground. Subordinate offices are the executive agencies.

Read about UPSC Question Paper

Organisation of directorates

The organization of directorates is headed by the directors or commissioners. The Head of any directorate is in charge of the administration and execution of projects. The government controls the head of the directorates through other administrative departments such as the secretariat. 

By looking at the hierarchy we can say that secretaries in the secretariat are the ears and eyes of the ministry, whereas directors or commissioners are the hands of the ministry. The people who are appointed as directors or commissioners are generally generalist civil servants.

In the directorates, we can find the following main officers:

• Directors 
• Additional directors 
• Deputy directors
• Assistant directors 

The organization of the directorate can also include technical analysts and financial advisors. Under the hood of the directorate, we find many zonal offices. 

Also read about How to Prepare for UPSC without Coaching

Functions of the directorates  

Some of the important functions of the directorates, such as the directorate of income tax or the directorate of education, are:

• They are responsible for formulating the departmental budgets 
• The attached offices are responsible for giving technical advice to their belonging ministry  
• They inspect the execution of work laws and policies
• They allocate the money granted by the ministry through the secretary.
• They handle the appointment, promotion, confirmation, transfer, and posting of the new or old officers 
• They control the powers of the subordinate officers according to the predefined set of rules.
• They can give suggestions to the public service commission regarding disciplinary action and promotion.

Conclusion

Directorates, such as the directorate of education, are the agencies under the different ministries that are responsible for executing the policies defined by the ministry and framed by the secretary. In the directorates, the leading component is the director or commissioner who directly reports to the secretariat.