It has been recognised the world over that good governance is essential for sustainable development, both economic and social. The three essential aspects emphasised in good governance are transparency, accountability and responsiveness of the administration. The “Citizen’s Charters [1]initiative” is a response to the quest for solving the problems which a citizen encounters, day in and day out, while dealing with organisations providing public services.

The basic objective of the Citizen’s Charter is to empower the citizen in relation to public service delivery. The six principles of the Citizen’s Charter movement as originally framed were:

1.   Quality: Improving the quality of services;

2.   Choice: Wherever possible;

3.   Standards: Specifying what to expect and how to act if standards are not met;

4.   Value: For the taxpayers’   money;

5.   Accountability:  Individuals and Organisations; and

6.   Transparency:Rules/Procedures/Schemes/Grievances.

ARC 2^ND defines citizen charter as an instrument which seeks to make an organization transparent, accountable and citizen friendly. A citizen charter is basically a set of commitments made by an organization regarding the standards of service which it delivers.

Why citizen charter

• For making public service providers more accountable& responsive.
• Citizen Charter is the result of search for administrative accountability in democracy, Leg. Controls adm through making laws, voting budgets etc., but this can’t substitute continuous monitoring required for implementing government programmes.
• A/C is filtered at each level& by the time it reaches the lowest level i.e. people, it becomes very bleak. But through Citizen Charter, administration is directly a/c to people.
• Clarity of rights & responsibility.
• Cost effective: No separate machinery required except written commitment by organisation & community.
• Continuous basis
• Checks abuses by administration
• Prevent delays
• Saves times of aggrieved person & his harassment
• People friendly device.
• Another type of A/C imposed by judicial reviews, but it involves cumbersome procedures & takes a lot of time – ruling in particular cases – Citizen Charter is a better way.
• NPM emphasizes entrepreneurial role of government to enforce a/c. but here also emphasis is on strategic rather than detailed control on day to day provision of services.

Components of Citizen Charter

Citizen’s Charter is a document of commitments made by a Government organization to the Citizens/client groups in respect of the services/schemes being provided to them or to be provided to them. Effective strategies of realization would have to be worked out at multiple levels and authentification of these strategies needs to be attempted at every level in the political and administrative system.

These strategies must incorporate three elements.

1.   clarity at every level about the objectives of Charter as an instrument of policy rationalization and administrative tuning to deliver policy goals expected by the citizens.

2.   designing and delivery of Charters as live instruments of citizen- administration interface and instituting citizen inpublic domain.

3.   evolving mechanisms for Charter monitoring, Charter evaluation and Charter review. Instituting a system of acknowledging effectiveness in Charter implementation can help the process.

The Charter programme can become instrumental in promoting the objectives of responsive and accountable governance and also contribute to improvement in service delivery. This has to be instrumental in enhancing the competence and capability of organisations to improve delivery of services and tune administration to the needs of citizens. The main components of citizen charter are :

The ARC Seven Step Model for Citizen Centricity

a.   Define all services which you provide and identify your clients

b.   Set standards and norms for each service

c.   Develop capability to meet the set standards

d.   Perform to achieve the standards

e.   Monitor performance against the set standards.

f.    Evaluate the impact through an independent mechanism

g.   Continuous improvement based on monitoring and evaluation of results.

Evaluation of Citizen’s Charters

An evaluation of the Citizen’s Charters of various government agencies was carried out by DARPG and Consumer Coordination Council, New Delhi, an NGO, in October 1998. The results were quite encouraging given the nascent stage of this initiative in India. A brief questionnaire has been circulated to all Ministries/Departments and State Governments/Union Territories to enable them to undertake an in-house evaluation of their Citizen’s Charters. These organisations were also advised to undertake external evaluations, preferably through NGOs.

During the Year 2002-03, DARPG engaged a professional agency to develop a standardised model for internal and external evaluation of Citizen’s Charters in a more effective, quantifiable and objective manner. This agency also carried out evaluation of implementation of Charters in 5 Central Government Organisations and 15 Departments/Organisations of States of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. This Agency was also required to suggest methods for increasing awareness, both within the organisation and among the users, and to suggest possible methods for orientation of management and the staff in the task of formulating and deploying Charters.

The major findings of the evaluation carried out by the agency, as stated I its report were:-

1.    In majority of cases Charters were not formulated through a consultative process;

2.   By and large service providers are not familiar with the philosophy, goals and main features of the Charter;

3.   In none of the departments evaluated, had adequate publicity been given to the Charters. In most Departments, the Charters were only in the early stages of implementation;

4.   No funds were specifically earmarked for awareness generation on Citizen’s Charter or for orientation of the staff on various components of the Charter.

Further, the key recommendations in the report, inter alia, stressed upon:-

1.   The need for citizens and staff to be consulted at every stage of formulation of the Charter;

2.   Orientation of staff about the salient features and goals/objectives of the Charter; vision and mission statement of the department; and skills such as team building, problem solving, handling of grievances and communication skills;

3.   The need for creation of database on consumer grievances and redress;

4.   The need for wider publicity of the Charter through print media, posters, banners, leaflets, handbills, brochures, local newspapers etc. and also through electronic media;

5.   Earmarking of specific budgets for awareness generation and orientation of staff, and

6.   Replication of best practices in this field.

Problems faced in Implementing the Charters

As pointed out earlier, the Citizen’s Charters initiative in India had started in 1997 and most of the Charters formulated thereupon are in a nascent stage of implementation. Introduction of new concepts is always difficult in any organisation. Introduction and implementation of the concept of Citizen’s Charter in the Government of India was much more difficult due to the old bureaucratic set up/procedures and the rigid attitudes of the work force. The major obstacles encountered in this initiative were:-

1.   The general perception of organisations which formulated Citizen’s Charters was that the exercise was to be carried out because there was a direction from above. The consultation process was minimal or largely absent. It, thus, became one of the routine activities of the organisation and had no focus;

2.   For any Charter to succeed the employees responsible for its implementation should have proper training and orientation, as commitments of the Charter cannot be expected to be delivered by a workforce that is unaware of the spirit and content of the Charter. However, in many cases, the concerned staff were not adequately trained and sensitised;

3.   Sometimes, transfers and reshuffles of concerned officers at the crucial stages of formulation/implementation of the Citizen’s Charter in an organisation   severely undermined the strategic processes which were put in place and hampered the progress of the initiative;

4.   Awareness campaigns to educate clients about the Charter were not conducted systematically;

5.   In some cases, the standards/time norms of services mentioned in Citizen’s Charter were either too lax or too tight and were, therefore, unrealistic, thereby creating an unfavourable impression on the clients of the Charter;

6.   The concept behind the Citizen’s Charter was not properly understood. Information brochures, publicity materials, pamphlets produced earlier by the organisations were mistaken for Citizen’s Charters.

Lessons learnt

The following   lessons   have   been   learnt from the experience of implementing the Citizen’s Charter initiative till date:

(i)   As with any new effort, the Citizen’s Charter initiative is bound to be looked at initially with skepticism by bureaucrats as well as citizens. Hence, an effective awareness campaign amongst all the stakeholders at the initial stage is essential to overcome this skepticism. These awareness campaigns should be designed and delivered innovatively and effectively.

(ii)  The issuance of Citizen’s Charter will not change overnight the mindset of the staff and the clients, developed over a period of time.   Therefore, regular, untiring and persistent efforts are required to bring about attitudinal changes.

(iii) A new initiative always encounters barriers and misgivings from the staff. There is a natural resistance to change, particularly among the cutting-edge staff. Involving and consulting them at all the levels of formulation and implementation of Citizen’s Charter will go a long way in overcoming this resistance and will made them an equal partner in this exercise.

(iv) Instead of trying to reform all the processes at once and encounter massive resistance, it is advisable to break the tasks into small components and tackle them one at a time.

(v) The charter initiative should have a built-in mechanism for monitoring, evaluating and reviewing the working of the Charters, preferably through an outside agency.

Case study

Dr C.N. Ray’s study highlights the following aspects:

• There is great variation in across organizations in terms of information provided, procedures stipulated and grievance redressal system.
• Most charters except that of Indian Railways neglect compensation for non-adherence to commitments.
• Most charters have been framed by the organisation without participation by citizen.
• While the senior officers are very supportive of the concept, lower cutting-edge functionaries are not very enthusiastic. This calls for needs sound organisation & extra programmes.
• As of now, CC in India cover only public agencies – With economic liberalization pvt agencies are providing public services too, so they too should be covered.
• A few charters do fix individual responsibility. Ministry of Consumer Affairs has proposed grass roots committees for monitoring stock taking in TPDS outlets.