The same benchmark, ie, KPI has been set for customs and IR officials to assess their performance as far as revenue collection is concerned. Thus, the performance of the tax machinery covering customs officials and Inland Revenue officials would be made on the basis of KPIs, including achievement of targets or not. The FBR''s KPIs clearly indicate that the achievement of target has been given 100 per cent marks/ranking among major performance indicators. For Customs officials as well as IR officials in LTUs, MCCs and RTOs, the achievement of the target is first major KPI for assessment of tax machinery''s performance in the field formations. In the presence of revenue shortfall, the FBR will assess number of officials whose performance went down keeping in view the KPIs set by the Board.
Sources said that the FBR cannot give credit to the tax officials for collection of withholding tax while assessing their performance under the KPIs. The officials responsible for revenue shortfall would be marked and assessed on the basis of the KPIs set by the FBR.
This major initiative was taken by the then FBR Member (HRM) Khawaja Tanveer Ahmed, who is now working as Director General Intelligence and Investigation Inland Revenue (IR) FBR. After eight meetings of the Board-in-Council in the past, the performance evaluation criteria were set for the tax machinery based on the KPIs. Khawaja Tanveer Ahmed was primarily responsible for inhalation of the job description and KPIs of the entire tax machinery.
At that time, the exercise for Job Description (JDs) and KPIs was initiated by the HRM Wing with the objective to foster better accountability within FBR by providing an objective assessment tool. KPIs for Inland Revenue field offices and Customs Officers from BPS-17-21 of field formations were developed and linked Performance Evaluation Reports (PER) with KPIs. Accordingly, the exercise was started in May 2015. The JDs/KPIs of the customs officers will be a good tool to be used by Customs Wing to track the customs employees'' performance against the stated job requirements and measurable outcomes tied to specific tasks for effective implementation of the JDs and KPIs.
At the same time, the FBR had already introduced the concept of computerised record-based evaluation of tax officials in public sector organisation having KPIs for writing annual confidential reports (ACRs).
To carry out realistic assessment of tax officials, a new computerised system was put in place to record actual performance of the officer on monthly and quarterly basis. The tax officers cannot lie about their performance when their job description is compared with key performance indicators. Tax officers would themselves select top 5 most important jobs that they think are mostly consuming their time and which must be accounted for in their final performance evaluation.
Based on the computerised record, the ACRs would be written by the senior officials taking into account their actual performance in the field formations. It would be impossible to write very good ACR of a tax officer whose computerised record tells entirely a different story. In the presence of top five job descriptions of tax officials, the performance of tax officials would be monitored on monthly and quarterly basis. The KPIs of the officers would be matched with the contents of the ACRs before signing and countersigning by the tax officials.
Moreover, the computerised-based job description would be duly considered while writing ACRs of the tax officers. In case of any mismatch, senior official has to explain reason for writing good ACR when job description is showing poor performance.
For the first time such a system has been introduced in any public sector organisation. The beauty of the system is that no officer of the FBR can manage to write good ACR in cases where the computer record evaluation shows poor performance. The constant monitoring, evaluation and computerisation of records would help the senior officials update information about their junior officers in the field formations.
According to the FBR''s instructions to all chief commissioners/chief collectors and all commissioners/collectors in the past, the effective performance management is based on objective job descriptions and KPIs. The HRM Wing is undertaking a gigantic task of developing the job description and KPIs for every position in FBR (HQ) and its field formations.