Delivery of Public Services-The way Forward

Dr. R Ramakrishnan, ramakrish54@gmail.com

Public services mean the services provided by a government to its citizens, either directly or by financing private provision of such services.

The State has a very important role to play in making available the essential public goods and services that ensure certain minimum level of well-being to everyone in need of those.

To improve the quality and quantity of services delivered to the citizens, governments resort to continuous improvements.

Need for delivering the services efficiently and effectively to ensure desired level of well-being to all concerned and within as short time span.

To serve the customers effectively, Private sector segment their customer-bases according to various factors including Demographic profile, Age and Economic status to provide them more Personalized services.

Competitiveness in the market ensures efficiency of delivery of private services.

On the other hand most of the time Public service is having monopoly. Lack of competition tends to make the service sloppy. Further In the public sector, in contrast to the private sector, it is crucial to understand the nature of the policy outcomes required – as well as the customer outcomes.

Public and private Sectors also differ significantly in their service relationships with external customers.

In the private sector, the relationship between service provider and customer is normally direct and comparatively straightforward while in the Public sector, provider customer relationship is often more complex and indirect

The poor face more barriers in accessing even a free public service.

PovertyPhysicalAssociated vested interestsLess efficiency and corruption

pronePsychological barrierMismatch between time slotLanguage barrier

The bureaucracy In India has expanded substantially after independence with introduction of many welfare activities for improving the socio-economic status of the citizen.

But failed in transforming itself by developing right attitude and responsiveness towards the citizen

Providing services require interaction between the service provider and the client and the service provider should be responsive to the need of the people.

Commitment to change the institutional arrangement for transforming the delivery system is the urgent need for improving services to the poor.

Three ways of improvement of ServicesIncreasing poor clients’ choice and

power over service providers and their participation in service delivery,

Raising poor citizens’ voice, through the ballot box

Rewarding the effective and Penalizing

the ineffective delivery of services to poor people.

Improved Public Service Delivery depends on•Easy access and availability of public servants

•Transparency in administrative systems:

• Accountability:

• Monitoring of Public Services

•A good complaint management system

•Simplification of processes etc.

• Strong measures against corruption.

• Usage of IT

ETVX Model

Entry criteria define what inputs are required and what quality these must be to achieve the exit criteria.Task definitions specify the actions within the processValidation definitions identify test points within the process and define the tests and criteria for checking at these points.Exit criteria define what outputs are required and what quality these must be to meet the needs of customer processes.

SEVOTTAM Model1.Citizen’s Charter – that specifies and publishes the standards of service delivery.

1.1 Implementation

Identification of services offered and their standards

Understanding service recipient expectations

Aligning services offered with service recipient expectations

Preparation of Citizen’s Charter

Understanding of Charter’s contents

1.2 Monitoring Comparison of actual with prescribed standards

Communication about differences in actual and prescribed standards

Elimination of differences between actual and prescribed standards

1.3 Review Charter effectiveness assessment

Alignment of Charter with changes in environment

Awareness about revision in service standards and Charter

2. The Public Grievance Redress Mechanism

2.1 ReceiptPublic awareness of grievance lodging processConvenience to public in lodging a grievances

Classification of grievances at the point of receipt

2.2 RedressDetermination of time norms for grievance handlingAdherence to time norms for grievance handlingDisposal of grievances

2.3 Prevention

Identification of grievance prone areas Action on grievance prone areas through Annual Action Plan Action on grievance prone areas through Charter Review Action on grievance prone areas through internal coordination Awareness about progress of controlling grievance prone areasIdentification of grievance prone areas

3. Delivery Capability

3.1 Customers

Determining and improving citizen satisfaction levels

Measuring citizen satisfaction levels across the organization and field

Using citizen satisfaction measurement for Charter review

Creating a citizen focused environment across field offices

Differences in service delivery performance across field offices

3.2 Employees

Employee behaviour for courtesy, punctuality, delivery promptness

Willingness of employees to accept responsibility

Employee motivation for service delivery improvement

3.3 Infrastructure

Basic infrastructure and facilities for service recipients

Resource requirement to meet prescribed service standards

Efficient use of available resources for continuous improvement

Basic infrastructure and facilities for service recipients

Sevottam is a very well thought out mechanism that takes into account the practical realities of public service delivery

Define the services and classify clientsSet standards and norms for each serviceDevelop capability to meet the set standardsPerform to achieve the standardsMonitor performance against the set standardsEvaluate impact through an independent mechanismContinuous improvement based on monitoring and evaluation

Even though Government of India took the initiative of creating the citizen charter in 1996, yet it is still in infancy. Citizens have to resort to the RTI act 2005 to get information even now. Like many things, what we need is implementation rather than planning

It can be seen that technology is a great equalizer. The most important aspect of Public Delivery – transparency can be achieved very easily with ICT.

Improving transparency of functioning also helps to reduce corruption and gap in effort of the public servants in improving delivery.

Similarly Accountability is also very easy to attain when we use ICT, because manipulations becomes more difficult in this scenario. The government of India’s definition of e-governance as ‘using IT to bring about SMART (Simple Moral Accountable Responsive Transparent) governance appears more rounded and wider in scope but tends to dilute the boundaries between good governance and e-governance. But we find most of the government websites are not updated for months together

The main problem with us has been in implementing what has been planned.

What we need is a mechanism that continuously monitors. And the best bet for the same is the society at large rather than the politicians or bureaucracy. And to make our democracy of the people to be really effective we need to make it by the people and for the people.

Over the years the role of the government and the businessmen has gone lots of transformation in the recent years. The distinction has become blurred and we find government in the commercial role on one hand and the private sector doing many social services as part of their CSR activities.

We also have different models of Public Private Partnerships as well.

I think in the current scenario we need to depend more on these PPP’s than anything else in solving our problems as then only there will be involvement of all the stakeholders.

Thank YOU