Dr.

R Ramakrishnan,
ramakrish54@gmail.com

Delivery of Public ServicesThe way Forward

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.
Poverty
Physical
Associated vested interests
Less efficiency and corruption prone
Psychological barrier
Mismatch between time slot
Language barrier

The bureaucracy In India has expanded

substantially after independence with introduction of
many welfare activities for improving the socioeconomic 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 Services

Increasing 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 process
Validation 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 Model

1.Citizens Charter that specifies and publishes the standards of service delivery.

Identification of services offered and their standards

Understanding service recipient expectations
1.1

Implementation

Aligning services offered with service recipient expectations

Preparation of Citizens Charter
Understanding of Charters 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

Public awareness of grievance lodging process
Convenience to public in lodging a grievances
2.1 Receipt
Classification of grievances at the point of receipt
Determination of time norms for grievance handling
Adherence to time norms for grievance handling
2.2 Redress
Disposal of grievances
Identification of grievance prone areas
Action on grievance prone areas through Annual Action
Plan
Action on grievance prone areas through Charter Review
2.3 Prevention Action on grievance prone areas through internal
coordination
Awareness about progress of controlling grievance prone
areas
Identification of grievance prone areas

3. Delivery Capability
Determining and improving citizen satisfaction levels
Measuring citizen satisfaction levels across the organization and
field
3.1

Customers

Using citizen satisfaction measurement for Charter review

Creating a citizen focused environment across field offices
Differences in service delivery performance across field offices
Employee behaviour for courtesy, punctuality, delivery promptness

3.2

Employees

Willingness of employees to accept responsibility

Employee motivation for service delivery improvement
Basic infrastructure and facilities for service recipients
Resource requirement to meet prescribed service standards

3.3

Infrastructure

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 clients

Set standards and norms for each service
Develop capability to meet the set standards
Perform to achieve the standards
Monitor performance against the set standards
Evaluate impact through an independent
mechanism
Continuous 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 Indias 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 PPPs than anything else in solving our problems as then
only there will be involvement of all the stakeholders.

Thank YOU