“Transform India

With
Narendra Modi”

Collective inputs from over 125,000+ Indian Citizens on

“Brining Customer Service Approach at Government Offices”

(Issues, Root Causes and Proposed Solutions)

August 5, 2014
Background
Citizens of India struggle when they visit Government offices to get work done. From filing a
police FIR to getting a birth certificate and from getting a property registered to renewing a
driving license; they tend to face harassment, poor attitudes, demands for bribes and long
wait times. Through this exercise, we asked over 125,000 citizens about how a Customer
Service culture can be brought in Government workings.

Below are the key issues faced by citizens, root causes to them and solutions that
Government should look at implementing as collectively identified by 125,000 citizens of
India.

Government Offices - Issues Identified:

1. Government Officers have a lot of authority with very little accountability
2. No set guidelines for timeframe to complete a task
3. No published rules/processes
4. Lack of trainings and development programs
5. Officers who are caught misusing their powers are not punished strictly
6. Lack of feeling of responsibility
7. No complaint escalation matrix system in many departments
8. Computer literacy in a lot of government departments is still very low
9. Lack of inter-department coordination
10. No quality control measures
11. No solid complaint redressal mechanism
12. Agents are allowed to prosper outside every government office
13. No proper performance monitoring system
14. Selection for government jobs is more based on the academic criteria and less on
skills possessed
15. Government employees are moderately paid
16. No performance based incentives
17. Promotions are based solely on seniority

Issues at Government Offices - Root Causes Identified:

1. Accessibility is a big issue
2. Difficult to get through the Phone numbers which are published
3. Physical appearances required for even the smallest of work
4. Procedures are not published anywhere for public information
5. Expectation of bribes to get the work done
6. Attitude problems – they make it sound like they are doing a favour to the general
public and are rude
7. Lot of paper work
8. Use of technology is rare
9. No time period defined for each course of action
10. No transparency in government related procedures

2 Engaging Citizens in Governance

 11. No departmental telephone helpline
12. No priority services for handicapped, elderly and pregnant women
13. Low attendance of the staff
14. No accountability, only authority – no written reasons for rejection of applications
15. Lack of work ethics and professionalism
16. Maintenance of the records is in a bad shape
17. People are literally pushed away from department to department
18. Their lunch hours are erratic and they don’t come back on time
19. No appointment system

Customer Service Approach in Government - Solutions Identified:

1. Online appointment system to be introduced in all Government departments
2. Online applications and transaction of fees for transactions with Government
departments
3. All online forms should be accompanied by a FAQ document and atleast one sample
filled in form
4. Commonly needed citizen documents like Birth certificate, marriage certificate etc.
should be digitized and made accessible online
5. Online tracking of applications
6. Reason for rejection of an application should be properly written and returned
within the deadline
7. There should be specific deadlines for each application/ stages of application, time
bound service and penalties for unexplained delays.
8. CCTV cameras should be installed and maintained in all Government Offices
9. The government-public interaction should only be in very limited cases. For example:
General Traffic violation notice should be sent to the persons home instead of
stopping them and create a situation for paying bribes
10. On the Job and Customer service training for Government officers dealing with
citizens
11. All documents should be computerized and the paper files should be done away
with
12. Proper escalation procedures should be followed and proper legal action should be
taken wherever bribery is involved
13. Government employees should undergo proper orientation on timely basis with
focus on customer service and satisfaction
14. The discretionary powers available to Government employees should be reduced to
minimum
15. Accountability and performance based promotions in Government offices
16. Agents, Liasoning personnel and Channel Partners should termed illegal outside
Government offices
17. Salaries of the Government officials should be revised and should be made at par
with private organizations
18. Performance based incentives should be introduced for Government employees

3 Engaging Citizens in Governance

Customer Service Orientation for Government Offices - Citizen Inputs
1) All working in government offices should resolve matters fast and not keep it lingering
and harassing public – Preeti Shah

2) If that task has not been completed within certain time then this issue is automatically
escalated to senior level person. And it will be escalated senior to senior level. We will see
only 0.2 % issue will be escalated to CEO of the company in our case the minister of that
department – Mahendra Sahu

3) Nobody is assigned for customer care. Suitable easy customer care option required to
implement in all public related offices. The procedures of each activity and contact points
required to be very very easily available – Ratheesh Vidyadharan

4) Processes should be online with feedback and tracking mechanism available to customer
– Ramana Maruvada

5) Though there all the points given or identified are true, we must not put the entire blame
on Government Officers. major part of the blame has to be taken by their political masters
as well. When the politicians demand something undue from the officers, they take
advantage of the situation and demand some personal benefit for themselves like
corruption, postings etc. – Puneet Gargya

6) Good measurable performance review system – Aditya Goyal

7) Government jobs are not preferred by the talented qualified and skilled because of the
low salary, no recognition for efficiency and hard work, poor quality of working space and
atmosphere, too much of interference and high handedness by ruling class and higher
authorities. Slavery type of atmosphere, recognition for those who go out of the way and
even if one does not want to accept bribe he has no freedom to do so. Center has no control
over state govt offices. Too many languages; Center and states do not effectively
communicate with one official language – B. M. Geethaprasad

8) Each department should have nodal officer and the review of resolved as well as
unresolved cases should be minutes . Department head should arrange meeting regularly
with subordinate to review unresolved cases – Manibhai Patel

9) All grievance and complain letters addressed to Govt Department Heads or Secretaries
should be acknowledged, replied immediately and action to be taken within a specified time
schedule – Pravat Mohanty

4 Engaging Citizens in Governance

10) I feel that accountability & performance will improve with increased transparency –
Murali Apparaju

11) The main issue is attitude and the culture. Why these things do not happen in private
sector? We will that once we are government employee means no one can do anything to
us unless proven guilty. Change the system let people prove themselves innocent and let
the public submit complaints with proves – Kamal Yadav

12) Put in place a strong and quick reward and punishment system for government servants
that helps weed out useless employees from the system and encourage the efficient ones –
Rajamani Muthuchamy

13) Selection is reservation policy based. But promotions must be performance based.
Inefficient superiors bring all the evils of bad working culture – Rajesh Swami

14) Rather than continuing the works in government offices on papers and files with the
"notorious" red tape; computerization will bring some order to the offices. Citizens can file
online applications and they should be able to view the progress of their applications/work
online – Navaneetha Sivakumar

15) People of govt. Service should be honest and they have work in responsible manner –
Neelmani Thakur

16) Yes treating citizens as customers is good enough, right now they are treated like why in
the world are are you here and if you want anything done open your pockets to me and I
the Govt will dictate what it will cost – Jeevan Rao

17) We are talking about a cultural shift in government jobs, which is possible only with the
partnership of government employees and their decision makers. They need to buy-in
whatever is proposed for solving the problems. Somehow (may be via a ministerial
campaign) each govt. employee should be made aware of the fact that his salary is coming
from the taxes we pay. And he is a server than an officer – Sudhindra Tiwary

18) Remedial measure is to do a time and motion study for each service and set a time limit for each
service and to penalize the concerned official if the time limit is exceeded – Krishna Murty

19) As said above the root cause for all these lapses seem to be the negligence of Law in our citizens.
Once if they are made to understand the supremacy of the Indian Law and its value, I hope the
above problems can be solved to some extent – Sundereshwaran Murthy

5 Engaging Citizens in Governance