Empowerment of citizens through greater transparency promoted

through the astute use of technology, employing the best talent

pool and performing structured work by adoption of a team
approach, and guided and commanded by leaders with a futuristic
vision.

Changing Assam

Ever matched a photograph taken a few

years back; forget years, a few months back with a latest one? You will see a change, no
matter how big or small. Everything changes with time and so our beliefs, faiths, customs,
traditions and even expectations. Expectations from our parents, friends, relatives,
community, government and even god. But the question is what new things are we
expecting from these sources? The answer might be a little difficult or less important but for
one source, Government. I have been trying to seek answer to this question but couldnt
find it until one day.
It was a fine Sunday morning and was on my way to central London on a piece of business.
The London Underground as usual being a Sunday was packed to capacity. However, I could
spot some familiar faces. One such face was that of Borris Johnson, the mayor of London.
The mayor later occupied a seat beside me. And then the conversation started. I asked him
about his preparation for the Olympics to which he humbly replied We Are Ready. The
conversation continued and a moment came when I found it appropriate to ask the million
dollar question. The mayor acknowledged that the expectation of the people from their
government has drastically changed. He further said that previously governments existed to
run a nation, today they exist to deliver value to its citizens through empowerment,
transparency, astute use of technology and optimum use of the talent pool. Having said the
last one, he looked at his team that comprised university graduates, interns, engineers,
MBAs, MPs and anyone that could deliver value to his team. There was another dignitary,
an MP (apologies for not remembering his name) who remarked that if governments fail to
deliver value, then there is no disparity between them and a landfill of garbage.
Governments that cannot deliver value are a cost to the nation.
Being satisfied with the answer, I began to wonder how the elements spelled out by the
mayor can be put in a framework that can be widely adopted by governments to create
value to its subjects. He also mentioned two important elements; technology and human
resource. I also began to wonder how these two elements can go hand in hand to deliver
better governance, thereby delivering value. The answer came from a metaphor called
VALUE CHAIN developed by the renowned Professor of strategy at Harvard Business School
Michael Porter in his book Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior
Performance (1998). The Value Chain that looks like a flying bullet is a chain of certain
primary activities supplemented by supporting activities for each primary activity ensures
creation of value to the customers. Companies that have mastered the Value Chain are
highly successful today. So how can the government use Value Chain to add value to its
citizens? The discussion that will follow will try to answer this question. I present below the
Value Chain for effective governance.

The primary activities are the ones that actually create value. The supporting activities
which I refer to as vital support are in fact the activities that will power the primary
activities. Although the primary activities are independent, they are interrelated. A beautiful
integration of the primary and the supporting activities will ensure creation of value to the
citizens. Every supporting activity will play a vital role and in varying degrees in powering
each of the primary activity.
To start with, we need leaders who are visionaries, leaders who have futuristic visions. We
need leaders who consider themselves accountable for their actions, learn from their
mistakes and who have the ability to create an optimistic chaos and fuel the nations growth
rather than passing the buck and playing blame games. We need leaders with a positive
attitude and determination and who are volitional to accept great new ideas and
implementing them. We need leaders who have the zeal and enthusiasm to empower the
citizens, ensure transparency, provide better infrastructure, provide citizen service
(customer service) and make the government services simple and easy to access regardless
of what the circumstances are. We need leaders who can say with confidence WE CAN DO
IT AND WE WILL DO IT. Visionary leadership is very pivotal for powering the primary
activities.
We then need a human resource pool that represents the best talent. Although this pool is
widely available, governments fail to make use of them. The possible reasons are
favouritism and nepotism. To make optimum use of the talent pool, it has to form and work
as a team. This will require a Presidential form of governance. Like the US president who is
free to choose his ministers, IAS officers must be given the liberty to handpick the best
people for a particular job and delegate different aspects of the job to the different team
members and make them responsible for their respective tasks as well. A good team will
ensure better results as there is always constant appraisal of the team members by one
another. It also reduces the burden of the workload on one individual.
Last but not the least is the adoption and application of technology. If governments want to
deliver value to its subjects, they must adopt and support technology. Technology can

confer innumerable benefits to the society. Plenty of examples can be drawn from richer
nations where technology has changed the way public services are offered. Astute use of
technology will enable a government to achieve a number of milestones which otherwise
would have been difficult. Technology will make public services simple, transparent,
convenient, accessible and affordable.
Public services need to be transparent for people to
know the ins and outs about them. Lack of
transparency makes public services an irritation to
the common man. Consider a man going to a
government office to get a simple work done. In
most cases, he would not know what documents to
be accompanied with. He may bring along a few
documents with him but the government official
desiring to extract money from him will keep asking
him for those documents that may not even be
required. The common man will be frustrated because he does not know anything about the
procedures. But, had there been transparency, had the common man knew exactly the
procedures and what documents are exactly required to get his work done, he would be a
happier man.
Technology can solve this problem. Through e-governance, all necessary information can be
made available at the click of a mouse on a website such as the documents required, the
procedure, the time taken and the fee charged. This can also check corruption as bribe is
often offered when people do not come prepared for lack of awareness and wants to get
things done the other way to avoid the hassle. Further, government officials cannot
question the common man because there is always a credible source to refer to, that is
authorised by the government and maintained & updated by a group of talented individuals
empowered by the government to do so.
By infrastructure I do not only mean roads, transport, communications, housing, electricity,
drinking water but also education, social security (pension), health services, postal service,
justice and protection. Let us look at how technology can change the picture of social
security. The present scenario of social security is such that when an employee retires,
especially a government employee, he has to visit quite a number of government
departments to clear his pension. The time period ranges from a year to three years to get
the pension cleared while in certain cases it is even more should the person retire as an
ordinary employee such as a peon.
Now a government that is serious enough to ease this irritating procedure can employ a
bunch of talented people to create technologies to deal with this problem. Let us suppose
the government creates a central database that creates and stores a virtual profile of all the
working class people. The employer is made responsible for contributing to the employees
pension fund. The employer pays his part of the pension amount as well as the employees.
Once the payment is made the database is updated automatically. When the employee
retires, all that has to be done is to update the database once by the employer and once by
the employee to prevent unauthorised retirement. Thereafter, pension funds will be
deposited every month into the bank account of the employee without any hassle.

Citizen Service is synonymous to customer service. Citizens should be able to obtain

information on any public service offered by the government or be able to decipher some of
their ordinary problems without having the need to queue up in government offices.
Through citizen service the government should
endeavour to at least provide advice on how to
deal with a problem even if the problem cannot
be eliminated. The information a citizen seeks
could range from basic to the most intricate.
However, the government should have answers
to every possible query. The government can
set up a dedicated call centre and a one stop
website that will contain accurate information
about everything a citizen wants to know. The
website can also be e-commerce enabled to handle certain specific issues like paying a court
fine.
To further provide greater value to the citizens, government services need to be simple and
easily accessible. The dilemma with our country in general and Assam in particular is that
government services are beyond the reach of common people and in most cases cannot be
conveniently accessed. Lets consider a small yet practical instance of how inconvenient
government services in Assam are. An old man coming to a district headquarters from a
remote village to sort a few things out. His first inconvenience is his long travel because
either the services are not available in his village or not accessible.
His second inconvenience- he will tour around multiple departments in different distant
locations. And thanks to the inefficiency of the government departments and nontransparency of the procedures, he cannot get his work done on one single day and has to
come again another day. Till date I havent understood why it is so difficult to have all the
government offices in one location.
Another great example of inconvenient service is the land revenue (khazana) collection
system in Assam. I have a fair idea of the amount of hassle a person has to go through when
paying for land revenue since my uncle is a land revenue collector (mouzadar). On one
instance I happened to meet a person probably in his eighties walking seven kilometres on a
very hot day to pay his land revenue. On arrival in the office he was informed that the
government did not provide the office with the collection receipts and therefore, the money
couldnt be collected. The old man was required to pay only a sum of thirty-five rupees. But
the cost of the inconvenience and the hassle was far more.
A visionary government would have used simple technologies to solve this problem. Cellular
phones now have deep penetration into rural areas. Smart phone users can benefit from
smart applications while non-smart phone users can resort to text message facility.
Operators like Airtel have developed capabilities to assist in mobile commerce. So how
mobile technology can help this old man in the above instance? The solution is quite simple.
The government has to maintain a central database and must develop systems to remind
people of when a payment is due through text messages. The message may contain a
unique reference number that needs to be quoted when making a payment. Everything the
payer has to do is to type certain words incorporating the reference number and send it to a

designated addressee. A post paid cell phone user will have this amount added in his next
phone bill while for a pre-paid user he has to top his phone up with the required amount
before making the payment. Other smart options might include linking the bank account to
a cell phone number. Once the payment is received, the payer will be issued a unique
reference number confirming receipt of payment. This number can also be used in lieu of a
paper receipt. If requested, a paper receipt can also be mailed to the address of the payer.
Now, what does all the above mentioned primary activities strive to achieve? The answer is
EMPOWERMENT OF CITIZENS. Empowered citizens are better contributors to the
development of a nation.
They have access to
transparent information
aided by simplified and
accessible services through
better infrastructure to
make informed decisions.
This gives them a true
sense of belongingness to
the nation that makes
them great contributors.
Technology
can
also
empower citizens. For instance, the Transport for London website where citizens can report
a road work problem and can also monitor the progress of the report filed. Or the BBC
Democracy Live where citizens can watch and monitor what their chosen representatives
are doing and can raise their voice if required and appeal to a wider audience. Empowered
citizens are the signs of a thriving nation. The question mark in the Value Chain depicts
scope for further improvements.
Now, is it really difficult for the government to initiate such a change? Well, easier said than
done. However, a country with a huge pool of human resource can certainly initiate such a
change and there is a classic instance when Rajiv Gandhi asked Sam Pitroda to bring about
the telecom revolution in India. It was the vision of Rajiv Gandhi, the talent mobilisation by
Sam Pitroda and the astute use of technology that today even an ordinary man can afford to
use a cell phone.
Assam alone has a great talent pool waiting to be utilised, IT Professionals, MBAs, Project
Managers, the list goes on. But the discouraging attitude of the apathetic government has
compelled this talent pool to leave the state seeking opportunities elsewhere. There are
many individuals who are willing to contribute to their homeland. They dont need to be
welcomed by a Phoolan Gamucha. All they want is a favourable milieu corroborated by a
visionary government. Unfortunately, the government of Assam has always lacked this
vision. The leaders are no worse than a landfill of garbage.
Oooppss! I am sorry; at least electricity can be generated from garbage.....