Service Book Management of State Government Employees

Government of West Bengal
Finance Department (Audit Branch)
Nabanna, Howrah-711102

No. 6000-F(Y) Dated: 05.11.2019

MEMORANDUM

Subject:- Online system of Service Book Management in respect of State Government employees

Due to manual system, there are problems of Service Books not being updated, damaged, lost, erroneous entries, etc. causing enormous hardship to the Government employees and the offices. As a result, sometimes even retirement benefits to an employee on superannuation get delayed.

To overcome these difficulties and to provide relief from the problems being faced by the State Government employees during their service life and at the time of retirement, in service matters, introduction of Online system of Management of Service Book (mentioned as e-Service Book hereinafter) has been under active consideration of the Government for sometimes past.

2. Now in supersession of all previous orders of the State Government in this regard, the Governor is pleased to introduce a new uniform format of Service Book for all employees (including AIS Officers) of Government of West Bengal in the form of e-Service Book in Human Resource Management System (HRMS) Module of IFMS. Any subsequent updation of physical copy of Service Book will not be required from a date which shall be notified in due course. The State Government may, at any time, make such modifications in the Service Book format as may be considered necessary.

3. However, Actions to be taken by the Heads of Office, Cadre Controlling Authorities and the employees until the date is notified have been dealt with under 6 of Annexure 2. Application, processing and approval of Leave (other than Casual Leave), Loan, TC/HTC/LTC, Pay Fixation should only made through HRMS Module hence forth. The necessary entries due to transfer, release from old post and joining in new post shall also be transacted/ entered through HRMS Module only. In all online applications relating to Leave (other than Casual Leave), GPF, LTC/HTC/TC, an employee shall have to give declaration in the system that

“I do hereby declare that

i) I have not applied for any leave (other than Casual Leave) after 05.11.2019; or

ii) I have applied online for all types of leave (other than Casual Leave) through HRMS only after 05.11.2019.”

4. There may be situations in which the applications for leave (other than Casual Leave) has been made by employee manually sometime in the past but the same was not received by the office of the custodian as on the date of approval of service book due to misplacement, leave application not being forwarded by the recommending/ sanctioning authority etc. For such applications, manual entry may be done only by the office of the custodian even after the online approval of e-Service Book. However, this facility for entry of such pending leave applications at the end of office of custodian shall be available till 15.01.2020 only.

5. The Custodian of Service Book shall decide beforehand to provide the updated service book in any of the following modes to the employees for making entries in the e-Service Book and notify accordingly:

a) Duplicate copy of physical original service book

b) Photocopy of original service book

c) Uploading in HRMS the scanned copy of original service book.

6. All legacy data pertaining to service matters of an employee as already recorded in the physical Service Book shall be entered in the e-Service Book in HRMS by the employee herself/ himself by logging in through eSE (e-Services for Employee) functionality of the IFMS from the particulars available in the authenticated copy of his service book. However, only in exceptional cases, if any employee is not able to make the entries himself/herself, he/she may request the “Custodian of the physical service book” (refer Annexure-I) in writing to do so.The concept and role of the custodian of physical Service Book are explained in Annexure- 1.

7. After the entries are made by an employee and submitted to the Custodian of the Service Book in the HRMS System, the Custodian shall make arrangement for updating the physical copy of the Original Service Book as on the date of approval and approve in HRMS after uploading the scanned copy.

8. After introduction of e-Service Book, digital format of the e-Service Book approved by the Custodian in HRMS shall be considered as authenticated service record of an employee for all purposes. However, only in exceptional cases, where a physical copy of the Service Book is required by any statutory authority or a court of law, a printout of e-Service Book from HRMS shall be taken and authenticated by a competent and duly authorised official for the said purpose.

9. Entry of legacy particulars in Service Book in HRMS:-

• Role of Custodians of Service Book – Detailed procedure given in Annexure-1
• Entry to be made by employees – Detailed procedure given in Annexure-2

10. As per FD memo number 1880-F(Y) dated 25.03.2019 the updated copy of ‘Duplicate copy of Service Book’ has already been made available to the employees. A facility has also been provided in the e-Service Book Module of HRMS for scanning and uploading the physical original service book by the custodian which may be accessed by the employee and used for making entries of the particulars. However, an authenticated photocopy of original physical Service Book may also be considered as ‘Duplicate copy of Service Book’ only for the purpose of making initial entries by the employees.

11. All departments are hereby requested to request all the employees controlled by them to start the entry of legacy details/ particulars from the authenticated/ physical service book in e-Service Book from 15.11.2019 and complete the same by 15.12.2019.

12. Detailed procedure/ guidelines for legacy entry along with a blank specimen of e-Service Book are available in the ‘Guideline’ section of IFMS portal.

13. The detailed procedure for verification of particulars entered by the employee or office of the custodian for approval of Service Book in HRMS shall be issued in due course.

14. The process for Approval of Service Book by the office of the custodian shall have to be started simultaneously and completed within 31st December, 2019. Therefore, the departments shall make arrangements to implement this on priority and make arrangements for monitoring of entry, scanning & uploading of original service book and approval of Service Books of all the employees in all the offices/ cadres under their administrative control.

15. The roll out of e-Service Book is a significant solution towards establishing a fully automated Human Resource Management System (HRMS) covering all State Government employees so that all processes of Service records management from “recruitment to retirement” are carried out on digital platform instead of manual system. This initiative is expected to benefit all State Government employees.

Additional Chief Secretary
Finance Department
Government of West Bengal

No. 6000-F dated 05.11.2019, Source

Annexure 1

Custodian of service book

1. Concept of custodian of Service Book

In terms of Rule 38 of Appendix 7 of WBSR Part -I the Service Book of a Government employee shall be kept in the custody of the Head of the Office where the Government employee is serving and shall be transferred with him from officc to officc. However, in case of WBCS (Exe.) and WBPS the service records shall, however, be maintained centrally by respective Cadre Controlling Authorities. Subsequently orders were issued for certain other cadres like WBA&AS etc. that the service books shall be kept centrally with the cadre controlling authority. Hence as per existing rules and orders Service Book shall be kept with either of the two authorities as per the applicable rule for employees of a cadre: –

A. Centralised mode of custody of Service Books: –

a) To be kept with the Cadre Controlling Authority

b) To be kept with any other authority as nominated by the Cadre Controlling Authority

B. Decentralised mode of custody of Service Books

a) To be kept with the Head of Office where the employee is posted

b) For the Heads of Offices, to be kept with his immediate superior

The authority with whom the Service Book is kept shall be the Custodian of Service Book.

There can be instances where the custodian of the Service Books authorises any other authority of his/her office to keep the Service Books in his/her custody. In that case the authority who has been so authorised shall be the custodian of Service Book.

2. Role of the Custodian of Service Books:-

a) As per FD memo number 1880-F(Y) dated 25.03.2019 the updated copy of ‘Duplicate copy of Service Book’ has already been made available to the employees. An authenticated photocopy of original physical Service Book may also be considered as ‘Duplicate copy of Service Book’ only for the purpose of making initial entries by the employees.

b) The Custodian may also use the facility provided in the e-Service Book Module of HRMS for scanning & uploading the physical original service book immediately which may be accessed by the employee and used for making entries of the particulars. The Custodian/ Cadre Controlling Authorities shall notify the mode of availability of the service book to an employee in his department/ office for initiating entry in e-Service Book.

c) If any ambiguity is found in the service records of the employee, the original and duplicate physical Service Book should be rectified accordingly before starting online entry in e-Service Book.

d) The existing original physical copy of Service Book shall be kept with the Custodian of Service Book till the retirement of the employee even after introduction of e-Service Book.

e) The physical original Service Book shall be handled by the authorized persons only and under no circumstances the original physical Service Book is to be handed over to the incumbent concerned or to any other person. Anybody found to be responsible for violation of this instruction shall be held personally liable.

f) Once the legacy data of Service Book is approved online in HRM5 by the Custodian of Service Book, no service matters like pay fixation, leave (other than Casual Leave), loan, nomination, TC/HTC/LTC should be applied and approved manually. Particulars related to Transfer, Release and Joining of an employee shall also be transacted through HRMS as usual. All such applications and sanctions should be done online exclusively through HRMS, otherwise these will not be reflected in the e-Service Book. If, due to any unavoidable reasons the Transfer could not be transacted through the HRMS Module, Release and Joining shall be done through HRMS Only. The details pertaining to Transfer may be entered immediately in HRMS by the compete authority.

3. Scanning and uploading of Service Book by the custodian of Service Book:

a) The custodian of Service Book shall make arrangement to scan and upload the original physical copy of the Service Book from the login of the operator (created by the Head of Office (HOO)/ the Officer nominated as Approver by the HOO/ Delegated HOO) of the custodian of physical Service Book. Such uploaded copy of original physical copy of Service Book shall be available to the employee in his/her e-Services for employees (eSE) login. The facility for uploading of scanned copy of updated physical Service Book shall be available in HRMS form.

b) The scanned copy of Service Book shall be saved in maximum five (5) different parts/ files. The system shall allow maximum five parts for uploading. The scan should be made in .pdf format only and in 200 dpi, gray scale scanning mode. The total file size (considering all the parts) should not exceed 10 MB.

Example 1: If the service book of an employee is voluminous, i.e. there are huge no. of entries in a single service book, the custodian may decide to divide the service book into maximum five parts so that the size of scanned file of each part/file is not more than 2 MB.

Example 2: An employee has three different services for which he has three service books. The custodian must decide in such case that the scanned copy of all the three service books taken together shall be divided into maximum 5 parts/files so that size of each file does not exceed 2 MB.

c) At the time of saving scanned copy of the original Service Book, the Custodian should always select the file name as ‘HRMS ID of incumbent part number of Service Book.

For example, if the HRMS ID of the employee is 1234567890 and the number of parts of scanned copy of Service Book is 3, the names of the scanned files at the time of saving should be 1234567890_1, 1234567890_2, 1234567890_3, etc.. All these files are to be uploaded in the system.

d) To find out the HRMS ID of employee for the said purpose, please click on ‘Employee search’ menu from Head of Office login and type the full or part of the name of the employee.

Annexure 2

Instructions regarding entry of e-Service Book

1) There are 18 different parts in the new format of online Service Book. All the required parts should be filled up as per the service records entered in the physical Service Book. It must be ensured that all the parts are properly filled up, saved and checked for errors before forwarding the e-Service Book.

2) The legacy entry of service records in online service Book should be made by the employees using their personal login (eSE) from updated duplicate copy of authenticated original Service Book or the authenticated photocopy of original physical service Book or the scanned copy available in their login as uploaded by the Custodian/ cadre Controlling Authority.

3) Necessary instructions are given in the respective pages of “legacy data entry” of e-Service Book form. It is requested that the user must read the guidelines carefully before starting entry.

4) There is a facility to check the errors prima facie from the e-service Book itself. T he errors may be checked from the ‘Check for Errors’ button and the rectification may be done accordingly.

5) In the ‘Basic Details’ part of e-Service Book, there is scope of scanning and uploading relevant documents like Category (SC/ST/OBC etc.), Date of Birth, Handicapped Certificate, Photograph etc. in support of the service records, if required.

6) In order to maintain sanctity of the online service Book, actions to be taken for the service events like Leave (other than Casual Leave), Loan, etc. occurring after the date upto which legacy entries are available in the duplicate copy of service Book or the original copy of Service Book are as below:

a) After forwarding the e-service Book to the office of the custodian, the employees must not apply manually for Leave (other than Casual Leave), Loan, TC/HTC/LTC, Joining, ctc. for which sub-modules exists in HRMS module of IFMS. The employee has to submit an undertaking to that effect in e-Service Book while forwarding the same to the office of the custodian.

b) For the service events like Leave (other than Casual Leave), Loan, Joining, Transfer, TC/HTC/LTC which have been approved in manual mode after the date upto which entries are available in the updated physical Service Book, the office of the custodian must update the original physical copy of Service Book as well as the e-service Book accordingly before the e-service Book is approved by the Approver. If any such event is approved manually even after approval of the online service Book, the same is to be entered by the office of the custodian in the original physical copy of service Book as well as in the online one. A certificate in e-Service Book sub-module has to be given to that effect by the Approver of e-Service Book while approving the same.

c) The office of the custodian must not deal manually with Leave (other than Casual Leave), Loan, TC/HTC/LTC, Joining, Transfer etc. for which sub-modules exists in HRMS module of IFMS after the e-Service Book is forwarded for approval by an employee. It is also to be certified by the Approver of e-Service Book while approving the same.

d) Any service event relating to the following and already approved/ sanctioned through any sub-modules of HRMS online, either before making entries in the c-Service Book or anytime thereafter, will be reflected in the e-service Book automatically and are not to be entered manually: –

i) Leave (other than Casual Leave) ii) Loan iii) TC/HTC/LTC iv) Pay Details v) Transfer vi) GISS

For example: If any Earned Leave application is approved online through HRMS, the same will automatically appear in the e-Service Book and no further entry of the same event is to be made.

e) However, records relating to the following shall continue to be entered manually in e-Service Book by the office of the custodian of service book even after introduction of e-Service Book as these are not processed through any sub-module of HRMS:-

i) Trainings ii) Departmental Proceedings iii) Publications iv) Awards/Rewards v) service verification

7) The credit entries of Earned Leave and Half Pay Leave are not required be made manually in the e-Service Book. A button as ‘Auto Credit EL and HPL’ will be available in the “Leave” part of e-Service Book. On clicking the button, the periodical credit of those leaves from the date of joining in the service will be done automatically and is to be done only once for an employee. However, if required, the user will have the privilege to modify any of the entries of leaves so credited.

8) The employee or the operator of the custodian of physical service Book making legacy entry must check the authenticity of the records comparing them with “Duplicate copy” or original service Book, as the ease may be.

9) The facility to forward the saved e-Service Book will be available from a date to be notified later on.