Citizens' charter

Who looks after their interests? Photo: Amdadul Huq/drik News

THE initiative for a citizens' charter is one of the commendable initiatives of the present government. A citizens' charter, indeed, is the expression of understanding between citizens and the provider of a public service with respect to the quantity and quality of service. It reflects the expectation of the clients and the commitment of the providers.
The main purpose of developing a charter is to improve access to public services and promote quality. It does this by encouraging the involvement of users in discussions about the service, telling them how to make contact, what level of service to expect, and how to seek a remedy if something goes wrong.
In 2000, the Public Administration Reform Commission (PARC) recommended introduction of citizens' charter in a number of public agencies. In June 2007, the caretaker government (CTG) asked all ministries to formulate citizens' charters.
Following this order, all ministries and most of the public agencies have already formulated citizen's charters. However, the initiative has not yet been proved to be successful due to a number of flaws.
Firstly, people's participation in formulation of the charters has not been ensured. As result, the charters failed to reflect the expectation of the citizens, i.e. the service recipients.
Unlike many other countries, the government did not give its own definition of a citizens' charter or the objective of the initiative. Consequently, there is a lack of understanding across the civil service as far as citizens' charter is concerned.
All ministries and a large number of public agencies undertook the initiative without previous experience. The initiative was not piloted in a smaller number of agencies to gather experience.
No specific body has been assigned to coordinate the whole initiative.
The people who were supposed to implement the charter were not involved in the process, and there was no effort to build their capacity regarding citizens' charter.
The charters have not been publicised adequately. Even some staff members of respective ministries/agencies are ignorant about their own departmental charter.
There is no system in place to monitor whether the performance of an agency is in conformity with the charter, and evaluate if the charter is in line with clients' expectations.
Charters for local level agencies should have been formulated locally through the participation of local people, but were formulated at the central level by the senior staff. As a result, those charters neither reflect the expectation of the local people nor are they owned by the local administration.
In case of some services, there is only a service specific generic citizens' charter and no institution specific charter, which, indeed, is more important.
Due to the above-mentioned conceptual and procedural problems, the charters formulated so far have failed to bring any remarkable change in public service delivery. Even the charter documents have serious shortcomings.
For instance, in most charters, there is no vision and mission of the agency concerned. Standard of services is missing or ambiguous in many charters. No time limit has been fixed for delivering services and, in some cases -- the charter of the Bangladesh police for instance -- vague terms like "as soon as possible" (jothashighree), "to the extent possible" (jothasombhob) have been used.
Cost/charge for getting service has not been specified in many cases. A grievance redressing mechanism has not been outlined in most charters. In some cases, there is only provision for complaint lodging, and, in other cases, that is also missing.
In order to make the citizens' charter initiative successful, the government should take necessary measures based on international experience and considering the context of the country:
* A particular agency (regulatory body) should be assigned to coordinate the whole initiative.
* The government should ask the ministries to give more emphasis on the formulation of institution specific charters rather than service specific charters.
* Instead of introducing citizens' charter in all public agencies at one time, the government should start with a few agencies with large public interface, such as hospitals, railway stations, passport offices etc. One or two agencies can be selected for exemplary implementation of citizens' charter so that they can be models for others.
* A taskforce should be formed in each agency in order to formulate a citizens' charter or modify the existing one. Representation of clients and cutting edge staff must be ensured in the taskforce.
* To mobilise people in the citizens' charter process and publicise the charters widely, the government may work in collaboration with NGOs, civil society organisations and community-based organisations.
* For successful implementation of the charters, capacity building of cutting edge staff is crucial. Capacity building initiatives like training, seminars, workshops etc. should be organised on a regular basis. Governmental training institutes like BPATC, BARD, NILG, JATI and the Police Academy may incorporate citizens' charter in their training curricula. A training manual can be developed for this purpose.
* Performance appraisal of the staff can be linked with citizens' charter of the agency concerned.
* A special budget should be earmarked for the citizens' charter initiative.
In Bangladesh, making the citizens' charter initiative successful is really a hard nut to crack. The bureaucracy in Bangladesh, with its colonial legacy, is often considered to be a closed system.
It tends to resist change and rejects innovations. Despite that, the government's proactive initiative to introduce citizens' charter is an expression of its commitment to improve public service delivery.
The initiative, if successful, would be considered as a landmark initiative in making public service pro-people. The government, therefore, should take necessary steps to get rid of the shortcomings of the initiative as mentioned above.
More importantly, commitment of the civil servants to the charters should be developed. This cannot be expected to take place overnight. A long-term, planned and coordinated effort is required to achieve this.

Arif H. Khan: Program Manager (Governance), Manusher Jonno Foundation.

(Abstract from the authors keynote paper presented in a seminar jointly organised by Manusher Jonno Foundation and Transparency International Bangladesh on September 1. Translation: Author)