Lets consider your family where your father earns the bread and butter for the family. Hence your father has the full power to utilise the money he earns. But in order to run the family smoothly, some powers have been delegated to your mother also. Like

                            purchasing of certain goods,

                            selling old newspapers etc. to scrap dealers,

                             paying monthly money to milk man

                          , buying dresses for you for festivals  etc..

In the above cases your father has delegated your mother to spent his money but in a limited manner. But think, if your mother will like to buy a Air Conditioner for the house  !!! Can she purchase it with out the consent of your father. Definitely NO !!!

          Lets move further, suppose you have also a little brother and both of you go to a school where you have to buy tiffin from the school canteen. It is not possible for your mother to come to your school daily to buy tiffin for both of you. Hence she may give you some money and will tell you to buy tiffin for yourself and also for your little brother. Hence the money earned by your father is now with you due to delegation.  

             Like wise the Head of an Office may not have sufficient scope to intervene all matters of an office. In this case, he / she may delegate certain work to subordinate officers to manage the office smoothly.

            The head of office is assisted by officers/ staff in different categories termed as establishment and cash section . Head of an Office generally have to look after the following works.

Recruitment of staff

• assessment of vacancies

• intimation of vacancies to ossc/opsc/osssc

• receiving of dossiers from the recruitment agencies

• sending offer of appointment

• getting medical examination

• getting character and antecedents verified

• joining of candidates

• posting order

• opening of service book & attestation of entries.

·        Submitting yearly establishment review

maintenance of discipline in the office

• maintenance of office

• purchase of stores

• reply of audit objections

• processing the pension and GPF final payment

Cases

• govt. Accomodation

• redressal of grievances of staff

Sanction of

                    • short terms advances

                    • advances from gpf

                    • Contingent expenditure

                   • final payment on retirement/death etc.

 OGFR Rules provides the definition of “Head of an Office” at 2(XXI) which is as follows.

:"Head of an Office" means any authority declared to be such by the Administrative Departments or Heads of the Departments; if the declaration is made in general terms and not with reference to specified rules, the Head of an office may exercise all powers vested in him not only under these rules, but also other financial rules e.g. the Odisha Service Code, the Odisha Travelling Allowance Rules, General Provident Fund (Odisha) Rules, the Odisha Treasury Code, the Contributory Provident Fund (Odisha) Rules."

Note -1 In declaring any authority as “Head of an Office” by Administrative Department / Head of Department in general terms and not with reference to any specified Rules, the authority of this rule i.e. Rule-2 (xx) is to be quoted in the declaration order. Head of the Office declared under this rule can delegate his power of signing bills under Treasury Rules to a sub-ordinate officer holding Group- B and above posts working under him.

Note-2 The head of an office may authorise any officer holding Group- B and above posts under him to sign a bill or order for him, communicating the name and the specimen signature of the officer to the treasury or treasuries concerned. Aauthorization of this kind will not, however, relieve the head of the office, in any way, of his responsibility for the accuracy of the bill or for the disposal of the moneys drawn from the treasury. 

Note-3 In case of big establishments, where it is administratively not convenient for one DDO to sign all the bills of the office, owing to the volume of work and location of different sections, etc. more than one DDO may be authorised by the Head of the office to sign bills on his behalf with the approval of the Government.

Further the rule 26(III) of OGFR provides delegation power to higher authorities which is as follows.

“Unless otherwise provided by any special rule or order of Government, a higher authority may exercise the powers delegated to an authority subordinate to it.”