ACRs handing over order altered

The health directorate has changed its order to hand over all doctors’ confidential performance evaluation reports to a private firm, a day after bdnews24.com has reported it. Director of the Directorate General of Health Services Dr Shah Newaj told bdnews24.com on Saturday that they would hand over only 100 annual confidential reports (ACRs) for ‘experimenting’ the automation process. Earlier, in an order he asked the Assistant Director, ACR section, to hand over the entire bulk of reports to the firm. The health directorate has at least 23,000 ACRs of its officers. He gave the order after his Director General gave the firm, Nazdaq Technology, full access to the classified ‘server room’ and ‘data centre’ of the Management Information System (MIS) of the entire health directorate. The steps worried doctors as ACRs are confidential. Senior Secretary for public administration Abdus Sobhan Sikder told bdnews24.com that in no circumstance they share ACRs with others of their admin officials. “It’s a highly confidential document. We maintain its secrecy very strictly”. Health minister AFM Ruhal Haque on Friday told bdnews24.com that he would look into the order. An official of the DG office said the minister instructed the DG to change the order. However, the DG is yet to revoke its first order that gave full access to a private firm to the government’s data centre and server room that keep information of the entire health system.