An employee taps his thumb on the biometric device while others look on at Suchana Bhavan in Ranchi on Wednesday. Picture by Hardeep Singh

Ranchi, Jan. 1: The state administration ushered in the New Year with two changes in its work culture that are expected to increase the productivity and efficiency level of employees.

While the biometric attendance system was introduced at 10 government establishments, including the secretariats, on the first day of 2014, the number of working days was slashed from six to five a week in the state headquarters.

The buildings, where the new mode of keeping a tab on employee entry through thumb impression made debut, are Project Building, Nepal House, MDI Building, FFP Building, Engineers Hostel Nos. 1 and 2, TA Building, Sri Krishna Sinha Institute of Public Administration popularly known as Administrative Training Institute Building, State Institute of Rural Development, Suchana Bhavan and police headquarters.

An employee at the office of chief secretary R.S. Sharma, who performed a pivotal role in implementing the new system, said: “This will bring a positive change in the functioning of the government.”

Pramod Kumar Tiwary, deputy secretary in the state personnel, administrative reforms and rajbhasa department, said some technical glitches were reported from Nepal House today, but a solution was worked out soon. “The employees need to tap their thumbs on the designated machines linked to computers while entering the office at 10am and departing at 6pm,” he said.

Although only thumb impressions are being taken to register attendance now, later on, iris scanning will be also done later and the entire system linked to Aadhaar.

“As many as 30 such machines, which will take thumb impression and scan iris of each employee, have been set up in the establishments concerned,” Tiwary added.

Asked about the attendance at the government buildings today, Tiwary said that they would be able to get the exact cumulative percentage only after a couple of days.

As today was a holiday in some government offices, the attendance figures have not been complied.

The five-day working week, which is only for the two secretariats and allied government offices, has been welcomed by a majority of employees. They didn’t seem to mind that they have to work an hour more everyday (from 10am to 6pm with half-an-hour lunch break between 1.30pm and 2pm against the earlier timing of 10am to 5pm).

In return, they will get the weekend off.