Abstract
The delivery of public services to the citizens is the most critical function of the government, among the other functions being development and regulation. The three essential pillars of public service delivery are timelines, quality and grievance redressal. The concept of public service delivery emerged in the 1990s, with New Public Management and Citizen Charter’s evolution in the UK. With the shift in the role of the state from provider to facilitator and regulator of public services, the focus is to ensure transparency, accountability and citizen centricity in administration and maintain citizen’s satisfaction and trust in the government.
This article highlights the concept of public service delivery, and time-bound delivery practices, adopted internationally and nationally. The article concludes that India needs to look beyond Information and Communications Technology and capitalise on other options as listed in suggestions.
Time is the scarcest resource, and unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed.
—Peter Drucker
Time-Bound Public Service Delivery
Each government has some tasks to perform, and these tasks range from service delivery to development and regulation (Administrative Reforms Commission, 2009). In developing countries like India, a majority of citizens have low-income levels which makes them dependent on the state to obtain goods and services (Afridi, 2017, p. 2). As India is a welfare state in principle and practice, it is the duty of the state to provide goods and services with appropriate quality standards and in a time-bound manner to the citizens (Pandey, 2019, p. 2). Historically, several countries that attained independence after the World War II from the colonial rule made the state intervention more justified for utilisation and distribution of scarce resources equitably and sustainably. The delivery of services by the government also ensures justice, welfare and development in the society.
Furthermore, if services are delivered well in time, it raises the level of satisfaction among the citizens, which in turn adds to their trust in the government (Bouckaert & Walle, 2003, pp. 6–8). Hence, the time-bound service delivery of the government becomes important and subsumes the other two tasks—development and regulation within itself. The citizens around the world look to the state for social welfare provision but often have difficulty in accessing essential services such as health, education and other social security services (Anand, 2019). This places the administration on a critical position of not only being sensitive to the needs of society and responding to it but also to anticipate demands (Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice, 2008). Time-bound delivery of public services refers to the provision of services by the public agencies guaranteed within a stipulated time. This stipulated time is the actual time estimation that is taken by an agency to deliver the services to the citizens. There are two different meanings in which timeliness in the administration can be understood: First, providing the services in a time-bound manner and second, timeliness in anticipating their demands. The anticipation makes administration responsive as well as proactive towards the citizens. In this article, an attempt has been made to focus on delivering public services in a time-bound manner and also to capture the key trends in governance reforms adopted across the globe.
Methodology
The present article is basically a review paper that builds on the previous research to explore the need, causes and the remedial measures to ensure time-bound delivery of public services. The article evaluates the present status of time-bound service delivery in India and related contemporary innovations. The innovations beyond the use of Information and Communications Technology tools can also significantly reduce the time in delivering public services effectively. The article would help the policy functionaries and the governments at every level to learn from the experiences and innovations at national and international levels and the academics for future research.
Background
The concept of public service delivery emerged during the 1970s and 1980s when the neo-liberal ideology conquered almost all debates in national and international spheres (Garg, 2017, p. 2). There were theoretical developments like the New Public Administration during the late 1960s focusing on client orientation and peoples’ participation in administration. Public Choice Theory (Sharma, 2004, pp. 44–50), which focused on offering more choices to the citizens’, decentralisation and citizens’ participation in the administration, was seen as measures to empower them in a democracy. The beginning of the 1990s set a motion for the development of concept and advocacy for public service delivery. The timeliness and other features like quality, grabbed the attention much later. The rise of New Public Management (NPM) during this period emphasised on adopting ‘what’ and ‘why’ from public administration and ‘how’ from private administration. It initiated what was commonly referred to as ‘market-based public administration’ (Lan & Rosenbloom, 1992, p. 535). The NPM grew as a movement in the United Kingdom, which was reinforced by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. This move led to a shift in the role of the state from being the producer and distributor of public services to facilitator and regulator of public services (Mathur, 2016, pp. 1–3). As a part of NPM movement, economic reform policies were adopted by many countries which liberalised and privatised the market, inviting private sector in places where the government used to operate and had monopoly. The rationale was to empower the citizens by offering them choices on the type of services. Another development was the genesis of the concept of ‘governance’ which emphasised on effective service delivery as the correct way of governing (Mathur, 2016, pp. 1–4). These theories necessitated the search of alternative models that could empower citizens.
The idea of public service delivery emerged in the 1990s during the Citizens’ Charter movement initiated by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries in the United Kingdom during the John Major government in 1991 (Sahoo & Kapoor, 2012, pp. 6–7). The Citizens’ Charter is a statement of commitment that describes the rights of users and their entitlements and the duties of service providers. The idea behind the introduction of Citizens’ Charter was to consider citizens as customers of public services and to make the public services more open, transparent, accountable and responsive to the needs and demands of citizens in the society (Sharma, 2010, pp. 322–323). The major thrust was on transforming the public services from bureaucracy centric to citizen centric. Various countries, around the globe, followed the United Kingdom and passed their versions of Citizens’ Charter based on their specific needs and demands, such as the Citizens’ First scheme in Australia, Batho Pele in Brazil and the like (Sahoo & Kapoor, 2012, p. 7). There was a variation in the names though the spirit was same, that is, engage citizens in delivering services effectively and in a time-bound manner. The message was clear that service delivery had to endure twin tasks of providing time-bound and appropriate quality of services.
Evolution of Time-Bound Public Service Delivery in India
In India, the demands for citizen-centric service delivery were influenced by the Citizens’ Charter movement in the United Kingdom. There was a great unrest and dissatisfaction among the citizens regarding public service delivery. The factors such as administrative negligence, corruption, red-tapism etc. have contributed significantly to energising the demand for effective and time-bound service delivery. The granting of constitutional status to local self-governing institutions in India was the first step taken in this direction. The enactment of the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment Acts in 1992 provided for decentralisation, political devolution and engaging citizens through participation in the administration of their affairs. The failure of many flagship programmes in reaching the beneficiaries further reinforced the need of adopting a new public service delivery mechanism in India. Thus, the governments have adopted a charter like machinery in India, which began after the convention of Chief Secretaries’ Conference of 1996. The next attempt in this direction was taken under the leadership of the then Prime Minister of India, Shri I.K. Gujral, who convened the Chief Ministers’ Conference in May 1997 on ‘Action Plan for Effective and Responsive Administration’ (Government of India [GoI], 2002a). The three main areas that were addressed by action plan included—making the administration accountable and citizen-friendly, ensuring transparency and right to information in administration and, finally, taking measures for motivating civil servants to perform well and adhere to the appropriate quality standards while delivering the public services. It had also recommended for vigorous enforcement of Citizens’ Charter, redressing the public grievances, decentralisation and devolution of powers, review of laws, rules, regulations and procedures. The Citizens’ Charter Scheme was implemented in various ministries and departments of the central and state governments. At least 120 charters in the central government departments and around 729 charters in the state government departments have been formulated and implemented (GoI, 2002b). A study conducted by the Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA), New Delhi, and Public Affairs Centre (PAC) in 2007 concluded that charters were outdated, lacked precision, commitment and had poor design and content (PAC, 2007, pp. 21–26). The implementation of charters lacked the spirit with which they were formulated. The findings of the study were similar to that reflected in the Eleventh Report of the Public Administration Select Committee in the United Kingdom way back in 1997, which pointed out that the creation of Citizens’ Charters is a vague idea, one with unclear objectives and useless tool in the way of administration (Public Administration Select Committee, 2008). These drawbacks of the charters led to the growing disenchantment of the citizenry with public service delivery.
The administration in India, grappling with red-tapism and other administrative malfunctions, compelled the government to look for alternatives in the provision of public services. The failure of Citizens’ Charter scheme in India was the fundamental reason behind the enactment of guaranteed public service delivery legislations by the state governments to ensure time-bound service delivery. India inherited its steel-frame bureaucratic structure from the British administration, which focussed on maintaining law and order rather than inducing development and serving the citizens (Centre for Good Governance, 2013). It is essential to sensitise the bureaucrats and make them responsive towards the citizens. Various studies conducted by the government and other independent organisations indicated the dire need to have formal legislation that could promise effective and time-bound services to the citizens. Further, the movement initiated by non-governmental organisations like the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) succeeded in its attempts at securing Right to Information (RTI) Act in 2005, which fortified the demand for guaranteed and time-bound public services. The Right to Public Services also had similar provisions of penalty on errant officials who failed to deliver public services within the time stipulated for delivery or denied the services without any reason (Raha, 2012).
Lant Pritchett (2009) points out the fact that bureaucracy in India is slothful and apathetic, and large-scale corruption has diluted its ability to deliver essential services. This bureaucratic inefficiency compelled Pritchett to call India a ‘flailing state’ (strong institutions at the centre but no connection with field-level agents leading to failure in the implementation of public policies; Pritchett, 2009, p. 16). Similarly, India is also sometimes referred to as a ‘soft state’, one which does not take a hard decision and fails to establish the rule of law with increasing corruption, crime and violence (Myrdal, 1968, p. 208). The World Bank report, Making Services Work for the Poor, stressed on the failure of bureaucratic machinery in India to deliver services to the poor (World Bank, 2004).
The attempts made at revitalising public service delivery resulted in new legislations, guaranteeing public services to the citizens. This was to make the administration more responsive and sensitive towards citizens, as it guaranteed to provide specified services to the citizens within a time-bound manner. Madhya Pradesh was the first state to launch the service guarantee legislation in 2010 by enacting Madhya Pradesh Right to Guaranteed Public Services Act, 2010. Many other states also passed their service guarantee acts similar to that of Madhya Pradesh with some additional features wherever necessary (Agarwal, 2005, pp. 13–15). As of now, at least 20 states in India have enacted legislation guaranteeing public services to its citizens. In the same way, the central government also introduced its Right of Citizens for Time-Bound Delivery of Goods and Services and Redressal of their Grievances Bill, 2011; however, the bill has not yet been passed.
International Practices
There are some practices adopted by various countries across the globe for effective delivery of services to the citizens, and their experiences can function as a learning guide for other nations. However, these innovations are predominantly in the form of using ICTs as a means of service delivery. In Georgia, the service delivery reforms introduced under the broader policy document, Public Administration Reform, were aimed at reducing service delivery cost and time and raising the quality of public services (PwC, 2015). It introduced and implemented one-stop shops, use of Unified Electronic System of State Procurement for e-tenders and Public Service Halls which made the service delivery time-bound, with appropriate quality standards, administration citizen-centric, transparent and accountable.
In Azerbaijan, the one-stop public service shop model was adopted in 2013 and commonly referred to as Azerbaijan Service and Assessment Network (ASAN). It aims to provide direct services to the citizens and a platform to manage all ASAN centres from a single institution. It helps in coordination of government employees of service centres, oversight and evaluation, mutual integration of databases of state bodies, accelerated organisation of electronic services and governance improvement (United Nations, 2015). The most innovative concept used in ASAN is the operation of exit poll, which helps to find out about people’s perception of services through their feedback and continuously work on its improvement.
Portugal has also made commendable innovations in providing services digitally by introducing applications like Citizens’ Map to track the nearest service delivery centre and Citizens’ Contact Centre that offers call centre and email services to the citizens for providing tailored services (United Nations, 2015). It has also introduced Citizens’ Minibuses that offers convenient face-to-face and digital services and intends to provide door-to-door services to citizens who have limited personal mobility.
Countries like The Bahamas has introduced Smartcards, like a safety net system for enabling poor to access services. Botswana, one of the least developed countries in Africa, has devoted one-thirds of its total budget on providing basic services such as education and health. For this, evidence-based policies for service delivery were formulated, and resource allocation made in order to prioritise strategic goals. The public service innovations in Colombia have focused on laying down standards for service delivery, formulating and implementing guidelines for the provision of services and capacity-building of personnel to improve the quality of services (United Nations, 2015). It has also focused on improving and strengthening the service delivery channels for effective delivery of public services.
Although each country is making innovation in the delivery of public services, the trend depicts that developing nations have outdone even developed countries in achieving developmental goals.
Indian Experience
Madhya Pradesh was the first state that introduced the path-breaking legislation guaranteeing public services to the citizens. The other states were inspired by this move and introduced their version of the legislation but with innovation. The states which have introduced this with innovation include Punjab, Delhi, Karnataka, Bihar and Rajasthan.
Punjab has introduced the system of ranking the districts based on time-bound delivery of services and disposal of the grievances instantly (Jagga, 2019). It has infused competitive spirit among the districts making them to deliver the public services within the stipulated time and redress the citizen’s grievances in a shorter period. It has helped in making the administration more sensitive and responsive to the needs of society.
The national capital Delhi has experimented with a very innovative idea of delivering the services at the doorstep of citizens. This move came as a response to curb the role of brokers (middleman/gatekeepers of the administrators) in the process of public service delivery. In this process, the citizens can call on ‘1076’ and book an appointment with mobile sahayak, who then visits the service seekers house within a given period to collect all required documents and submits it to the concerned ministry with a minimum facilitation charge of ₹50. The sahayak then visits the department to collect documents and delivers it back to the citizen at his doorstep to complete the transaction (Anand, 2019). However, the traditional methods which are more popular and preferred are limitations of this experiment. The technical glitches often keep citizens waiting when they contact toll free numbers. Also, inadequate human resources like the lack of calling staff and the criteria for sahayaks to possess a two-wheeler made its implementation difficult.
The Karnataka government’s innovation for guaranteed time-bound service delivery, named Sakala by the citizens, involves a bottom-up approach and involves each stakeholder. It aims at providing citizen-centric service delivery, where citizens voluntarily select the type of services, and there is an agreement of all the stakeholders on timelines for service delivery before fixing individual and collective responsibility (PwC, 2015). It also involves a detailed training plan for capacity up-gradation of officials, management by objectives with a mission as what gets measured gets done, periodic quality control check, performance ranking among government officials, use of data analytics and reporting. Sakala seeks total transformation of the work culture to make citizens’ experience pleasant.
Bihar is another state that has made the first innovative attempt by introducing two legislations, one for guaranteed public services and another for grievance redressal mechanism, which reduced the burden on designated officials and made them more accountable and responsive by introducing a state-level machinery for grievance redressal (Sabhiki, 2017). States such as Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and majority of northeastern states such as Meghalaya, Tripura, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim have not enacted any service guarantee legislation and believe that the provisions of the state government are capable enough for providing the services to its citizens (Srivastava, n.d., p. 4).
In Rajasthan, the service delivery function of the government has witnessed many innovations and is still undergoing transition by adopting a modern practice that could ensure public service within a time-bound manner and with specified standards of quality. Rajasthan has a glorifying history of making attempts at ensuring citizens participation in administration; examples include setting-up of first Panchayati Raj Institution in India, legalising local bodies, the MKSS demanding Right to Information, Citizens’ Charter, information and facilitation counters, service guarantee legislation, encompassing the provision of a large number of services within a stipulated time and grievance redressal. These examples reflect that the state has been sensitive enough to respond to the demands of citizens but lacks proactivity. This means the administrative staff should be sensitive enough to anticipate the demands of the citizens. Thus, even before the demand arises, it can be settled through administrative proactiveness. In Rajasthan, the time-bound delivery of public services is regulated through the Rajasthan Guaranteed Delivery of Public Services (RGDPS) Act, 2011. The Act incorporates the provision of 153 services from eighteen departments and has specified time limits between seven and sixty days from the day the application is submitted, depending on the type of service applied. The Act specifies that designated officials must provide services to the citizens within this time limit and failing which the citizens can file a grievance to the Appellate Authority. The Appellate Authority shall look into the grievance and impose a penalty ranging from ₹250 per day to a maximum of ₹5,000 on erring officials for failing to deliver services within the stipulated time (Agarwal, 2005, p. 16). The Section 5 of the Act specifies that the designated official shall provide services to the eligible person and makes it his right to obtain service within the stipulated time limit—the maximum time allowed for delivering services or rejecting any application for the service. Table 1 describes the number of services provided under RGDPS Act, 2011 and the timelines for each department.
Time-Bound Delivery of Public Services Through RGDPS Act, 2011
The state has incorporated several provisions in the Act to ensure that notified services are delivered to the citizens in a time-bound manner. It is also in the way of modifying the Act by merging Right to Hearing Act, 2012 with some additional provisions such as social audit that can help in empowering citizens and holding the administration more accountable, stringent penalty for erring officials, increasing the number of notified services from 153 to 225 with more explicitly laid and reduced time-limit. The state can also learn from innovative practices adopted in other states for smooth functioning. It is required to identify challenges in the existing system of public service delivery and address them instead of having a heap of non-functional acts.
Innovative Practices to Enhance Time-Bound Delivery of Public Services
Public service delivery acts as a medium of interaction between the government and the citizens. Thus, it becomes crucial to strengthen the existing service delivery mechanism in order to enhance the communication between the two. It is imperative to adopt innovative practices that can ensure a healthy interaction between them. However, innovation is not limited to the use of ICT alone. There is immense scope of improving service delivery beyond ICT also (Hafeez, 2015). Some of the practices that can be adopted for reliable public service delivery in India are as follows:
Citizens’ report card: The government can introduce the concept of citizens’ report card to evaluate the health and functioning of public service delivery, service delivering agencies and obtaining citizens’ perception on services, whether they are satisfied and service delivery meets up to their expectations or not. Service-level benchmarking: The service-level benchmarking lays down a minimum set of standard performance parameters that are used by all and across the country. It outlines the common minimum framework for monitoring and reporting these indicators used for benchmarking and lays down a roadmap on how to execute the framework. It is a new practice that has been adopted in a very few public agencies like water and solid waste management but can be equally beneficial if adopted in public service delivery (DARPG, 2011, pp. 15-19). Robust coordination among the citizens, service providers and councillors: There is a dire need to have an effective coordination in the functional relationship among the three actors, namely, citizens, service providers and the councillors. The framework within which these actors interact must not be limited and fixed. There should be immense scope for these actors to work freely, establish coordination and aspire to serve the interests of citizens at large. Co-producing the services: Co-production can be defined as any active behaviour by anyone outside the government that is conjoint with government production or is independent but prompted by some actions of the government. It is partly voluntary and contributes to the creation of public or private value as an output or an outcome either intentionally or unintentionally (Alford, 2009, p. 23). Co-production can work as an effective technique to produce as well as deliver public services. It enhances citizens’ participation and empowerment and also helps to address citizens’ demands in a time-bound manner. It helps satisfy them in a sense as the citizens are involved in every stage from production to distribution. Stringent penalty provision for erring officials: The grievance redressal mechanism should be so active that it ensures the compliance of designated officials to provide services to the citizens in a time-bound manner, and, failing which, they must undergo punishment in the form of strict penalty that acts as a negative reinforcement for other designated officials and also promote timely delivery of public services. Fixing timelines for each stage in service delivery process and its real-time location: The timelines for each stage in the process of service delivery should be laid down more explicitly: Each stage in the process should have a definite time to pass to the next stage, and designated officials should be held accountable for any delay in the process. Strengthening information and facilitation counters: Each department must have information and facilitation counters instead of being ordinary reception counters with no official to provide information. This would ensure the smooth application procedure. The traditional methods like setting-up of information and facilitation counters can help assist the citizens in obtaining services and can be complemented with charters and placards displaying useful information such as designated official, services delivered, timelines for each service, documents required for obtaining service and its procedure, other queries and the like. An experienced official can be seated on the counter in order to serve and assist citizens. Multiple service delivery: It is essential to have multiple service delivery options so that citizens’ demands can be fulfilled. These multiple service delivery options can include channels such as physical, digital and voice and blended with the local authority to provide tailored services to the citizens.
There is a great need to develop the human and organisational capacity building which cannot be ignored. The available literature on the subject stresses on the need to reform human resource and develop strategies that can help build a sound personnel system. It is, therefore, vital to sensitise officials towards the demands of citizens, providing them with skill-based training that could shift their relation from provider-user to service-user. The timely delivery of public service rests on the bureaucracy, and the government must conceive a sound personnel policy that brings in more competent officials who are sensitive and responsive to the needs of society.
The above discussion highlights that there are various measures beyond the use of ICT that can be adopted to ensure time-bound delivery of public services. Human resource practices and organisational culture among the other factors play a crucial role in determining the timelines in the delivery of public services. Thus, it becomes imperative to be careful about regular capacity building programmes for officials and instilling in them the spirit to serve. The need is also to look into resources, their allocation, determining the service delivery channels and strengthening them, as public service delivery is an important medium for interaction between the citizens and the government. Inducing a sense of satisfaction from the consumption of public services among the citizens will help build their trust in government (Bovaird & Loffler, 2003). The timely delivery is a very important component that can provide them satisfaction, besides the quality of services.
It can be concluded that public service delivery is an essential component of government functioning. The time-limitation is regarded as a cornerstone for the delivery of all public services. It also ensures accountability and transparency in administration. The rights-based entitlements have provided a new thrust to service delivery ensuring timelines. The service guarantee legislation in Rajasthan sets a perfect example for time-bound service delivery, although innovations made by other states make each state’s legislation competitively better.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.