Citizen's charters: Putting people first
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COMMENTS 
A Lokpal may reduce corruption, but will it improve the abysmal quality of our public services? For that to happen we need citizen’s charters and legal guarantees of prompt and efficient public services. Madhya Pradesh and Bihar’s legislations on public services are excellent beginnings
The popular mobilisation on the Lokpal issue has highlighted the urgent need to transform public institutions by rooting out corruption. The creation of an all-powerful ombudsman, it is hoped, will prompt a failing bureaucracy to take corrective action and improve administrative performance and service delivery.
In a country where most public services are provided and controlled by the state -- water and electricity supply, garbage disposal and so much else -- it becomes easy for a bureaucracy to refuse to perform its duties speedily and satisfactorily until incentives (read bribes) are offered them. Will a strong anti-corruption law then push them to function well? Probably not. This is why separate measures to ensure citizen-friendly public services are equally important.
Citizen’s charters, which serve as a pact between service-providers and users, are instrumental in overcoming the myriad problems that plague public service provisioning. And when institutionalised in a rights framework, they empower citizens by guaranteeing public services and reforming administration for their effective delivery.
From citizen’s charter to a public services law
First adopted in the UK in 1991 by the Conservative government of John Major, citizen’s charters marked a paradigm shift in policy goals on public service provisioning. The official line of “putting people first” was a radical departure from the traditional top-down approach of the bureaucracy. It helped build bridges between the government administration and citizens by placing the needs and interests of citizens at the heart of public service delivery.
The citizen’s charter scheme as originally envisioned included the Charter Mark, an award to recognise excellence in the public sector, as well as the creation of individual charters for different public services, setting out standards which those services were expected to achieve.
At its core, the charter framework was underpinned by certain cardinal principles: explicit standards of service with a commitment to quality; openness and information; courtesy and helpfulness in service delivery; exercise of choice wherever applicable and regular consultation with citizens; putting things right through responsive complaints and grievance redressal procedures; and value-for-money services to suit the convenience of users. These later became, under the Labour government of Tony Blair, publicly avowed standards of service from the government under the ‘Services First: The New Charter Programme’ of 1997.
Extrapolating from the British experiment, many countries around the world implemented similar programmes for transforming the delivery, culture and responsiveness of their public services. These included: Belgium’s Public Service Users’ Charter (1992); Malaysia’s Clients’ Charter (1993); Jamaica’s Citizen’s Charter (1994); Canada’s Service Standard Initiative (1995); Australia’s Service Charter (1997); Sweden’s Citizen’s Services Act (1998); Spain’s Service Charters (1999), and so on.
On close examination, all these initiatives displayed a similar concern with raising the general standard and quality of public services, to find locally sensitive and responsive solutions to citizens’ problems, to increase transparency and enhance the overall effectiveness of public programmes.
In India, public service delivery has always been notoriously tardy, frustrating even the most diehard optimist. Borrowing from the British experience, India has been making steady strides towards reorienting policy goals for citizen-centric governance.
The impetus for public service reforms was first provided in 1997, when it was mooted by Prime Minister I K Gujral as part of the ‘Action Plan for Effective and Responsive Government’. Since then, the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG), as the nodal agency, has progressively operationalised citizen’s charters in all major central-level ministries, departments and nationalised public sector units.
Starting with central-level ministries and departments with a large public interface, such as the Indian Railways, Department of Public Distribution, Department of Telecommunications, more than 765 citizens’ charters have so far been finalised by the central and state-level ministries, departments, public sector units and government organisations.
Furthermore, aligning public service performance with citizen’s expectations, the government adopted ‘Sevottam’ -- a model that recognises and encourages excellence in public service. For the first time, quality management of public service delivery became an avowed goal of the government, laying down benchmarks for effective and responsive service delivery based on citizen charter excellence, public grievance redressal and service capability.
But, closer examination of the Indian experience reveals the charter programme made no difference in altering the state of public administration in general, and service delivery in particular. In fact, a 2008 study conducted by the Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA) found that besides enjoying a symbolic value, many charters were non-existent and outdated, invisible both within the organisation and in the public domain, and lacked precision on standards, commitments and mechanisms. Poorly perceived by government officials as being a ritualistic and received document, they were reduced to one-time exercises frozen in time, suffering poverty of participation and failure of communication, and characterised by an absence of accountability and review mechanisms.
Although implementation of citizens’ charters has been an ongoing process, much remains to be done if they are to become live instruments of a dynamic citizen-government interface. At the very outset, the right to public services -- which recognises citizens as service users entitled to certain essential government services as a matter of right, and the government as the legitimate service-provider devoted to ensuring a high quality of public service -- needs to be officially recognised, providing legal teeth to the citizen’s charter framework.
Path-breaking laws of Madhya Pradesh and Bihar
The states of Madhya Pradesh and Bihar have already taken the lead by enacting first-of-their-kind laws ensuring services to the people in an assured manner, thereby realising the concept of the citizen’s charter as legally enforceable public entitlements. Both laws are an improvement on the citizen’s charter arrangement, with provisions for timely delivery of notified services of public use, appellate mechanisms for redress of grievances caused either by administrative inaction or delayed action, and the imposition of fines to penalise non-compliant and negligent officials.
Under the pioneering Madhya Pradesh Public Services Guarantee Act, 2010, which seeks to improve administrative efficiency, key public services including issuance of birth/caste/death certificates, pension schemes, educational scholarships etc are notified and fixed time periods are set aside for delivery of each service. Fixing the accountability of officials in delays and denial of a notified service, there are provisions for the imposition of fines to penalise non-performing officials ranging from Rs 250 to Rs 5,000 per day. This, it is hoped, will check any dilly-dallying and remove inordinate pendency by government officials, without sufficient or reasonable cause. One of the innovations of the Act is that the amount by which the non-compliant official will be penalised is the same as would be offered in compensation to the aggrieved applicant.
The Act covers 25 services of nine departments across the state to date. The chief minister, on calling for a review of the Act within five months of its implementation, reported that there were almost 8,500 grievance cases. Nine departments have already rendered around 25 services to 493,270 applications out of the 508,047 received as on December 2010.
Bihar too has enacted the Bihar Right to Public Services Act, 2011, which seeks to transform the modus operandi of public service delivery. Initially, the Act will cover 10 departments providing 50 public services sought by the people; it is expected to be computerised and online in the coming months.
The Act has similar provisions for obtaining notified services such as issue of ration cards, land records, income certificates, etc, within a stipulated time period, appeal mechanisms for redress of grievances caused either by administrative inaction or delayed action, imposition of fines penalising administrative non-compliance, and so on. Additionally, it links performance under case disposal with the performance audit, initiating disciplinary action against erring officials.
Both these initiatives underscore the demand for central- and state-level legislation that formalises the citizen’s charter framework. Although a draft Public Services Bill has been in the pipeline since 2007, it remains largely a document of little practical import, unlikely to create a results-oriented work culture in government offices.
The basic premise of the proposed legislation is to develop public services as a professional, politically neutral, merit-based and accountable instrument of good governance, guaranteeing effectiveness and efficiency in performance and delivery of services to citizens -- one that is rooted in a set of fundamental values and ethical principles. It also envisages the setting up of a high-powered Central Public Services Authority to facilitate the proper development of public services in the country.
But, while the Bill is certainly to be welcomed as a timely measure to reform public services, it is badly drafted, replete with rhetoric and tedious repetition, indicating a lack of clarity and precision in standards, commitments and institutionalised mechanisms of service delivery.
Institutionalising the right to public services
In formalising the right to public services as the essential first step towards overhauling the public service delivery system, an overarching legal framework containing certain basic features of the citizen’s charter programme, as elaborated by IIPA, needs to be worked out. These are:
To begin with, certain essential public services of high public utility, including programmes for clean drinking water, cooked midday meals in schools, healthcare for pregnant women etc, should be identified and made available through various government agencies. There should also be clear identification of the levels at which specific services will be provided, enabling citizens to know the levels at which they can access a specific service.
Along with catering to the needs and interests of specific service users and indicating the commitments for each of them, clear specifications about the timeframe for each service, for each level at which it is to be delivered, must be laid down.
Moreover, to help citizens exercise choice wherever possible and raise their voice where necessary to ensure that quality service is made available, commitments to service delivery standards must be widely disseminated and shared with the public. This will help measure and assess the performance of government agencies in meeting service standards. At the same time, clear information about processes and procedures to access these service benefits must be provided to citizens, with particular reference to the specific levels at which they can be sought.
More importantly, information on public service provisioning must contain details of procedures and avenues for public grievance redressal. This will help citizens ventilate their grievances and allow government agencies to initiate speedy corrective action. In addition, the timeframe for public grievance redressal, including acknowledgement of receipt of a compliant and expected action to be taken for its final resolution -- one that is realistic, honoured and acted upon by all officials -- must be made available for public knowledge.
Also, a systematic and periodic review of all public grievances should be undertaken by a public body or commission established for the purpose, including obtaining suggestions from the public on the operation and functioning of various government agencies, in order to restore faith and confidence in the public service delivery system.
Lastly, there should be provisions for leveraging information technology (IT) in the delivery of public goods. Electronic service delivery and e-governance is a major breakthrough in cutting out the massive paperwork and administrative bottlenecks that plague service delivery.
In this regard, the draft Electronic Service Delivery Bill, 2011, which aims to provide all public services to citizens in electronic mode, is a welcome piece of legislation. Setting out a five-year deadline for all public services to make the online transition, it incorporates a complaints mechanism and prescribes penalties for failure to comply with the provisions. What people can reasonably expect under the new dispensation is electronic submission of forms and applications, issue or grant of any licence, permit, certificate, sanction or approval, and receipt or payment of money. However, it remains to be seen whether India can improve its global ranking of 119th among 192 countries on the United Nations E-Government Development Index 2010, based on its performance in using IT for the service of its citizens.
Setting a precedent among states in e-governance, Maharashtra is the first state to enable citizens to demand online services by making it binding on government departments to provide these services online on a time-bound basis. The Maharashtra Mandatory Electronic Delivery of Public Services Act, 2010 (MMEDPS Act) seeks to eliminate intermediary officials by providing direct, easy-to-access government-to-citizen services. By targeting the provision of at least 100 services online within the next five years, the Act represents a novel effort towards moving from a ‘single window’ to a ‘no window’ system of service delivery.
The Jan Lokpal Bill: A critical intervention in grievance redressal
As highlighted in the Lokpal Bill, the existing grievance redressal machinery is ridden with conflict of interest, rendering it ineffective in tackling complaints of corruption or in providing relief to the common man. In order to overcome these structural deficiencies, the Bill provides a centralised institutional mechanism to deal with lower-level corruption in service provisioning by prescribing that each public authority formulate a citizen’s charter for the performance of its public functions, holding itself accountable to an independent Lokpal authority.
Under the Bill’s provisions, the charter to be prepared should contain the public authority’s commitments to citizens, which are to be met within a specific timeframe, and the designated officer whose duty it is to fulfil the same. They are to be publicly reviewed and revised every year, taking into account suggestions made by members of the Lokpal authority.
All violations of the charter are to be addressed to a designated public grievance redressal officer, whose duty it is to settle all such complaints within a timeframe of 30 days. At the same time, the Bill provides for one officer of the Lokpal to be designated as an appellate grievance officer in each district, whose duty it is to receive all such complaints and grievances against public authorities. A social audit of the appellate grievance officer is to take place every six months, in which its functioning is placed under public scrutiny and hearing.
Presenting an alternative to the omnibus Lokpal Bill, the National Campaign on People’s Right to Information has suggested that corruption in the delivery of government services at the local level must be separately addressed in an Act that provides for the setting up and functioning of a Public Grievances Lokpal (Shikayat Nivaran Lokpal) at the centre and in each of the states.
It proposes to build on existing structures of grievance redress set up under various entitlement laws, decentralising their functioning right down to each ward/block level, and developing their institutional capacity to receive, enquire into and redress any complaints relating to deficiencies in the functioning of the government. This will ensure a bottom-up, people-centric approach so that complaints and grievances are dealt with speedily and in a decentralised, participatory and transparent manner.
These commissions will have powers to ensure that detailed citizen’s charters, norms of functioning, and other obligations are codified and fulfilled by each public authority. Further, the functioning of the grievance redress processes will be linked to the Right to Information Act and also to time-bound service delivery laws providing for the imposition of penalties and disciplinary action against officials who do not meet the prescribed timeframes for providing services to the public.
To conclude, the campaign against corruption -- by identifying the key issues and concerns of the common man in accessing government services -- has provided a window of opportunity to reform public services in the country. In fact, it has brought the ‘public’ back into administration, creating a process of change towards ensuring responsive and accountable governance, and improved service delivery.
(Nidhi Sen is a researcher with the Public Interest Foundation)
Infochange News & Features, September 2011