Citizens charters, work culture and service delivery

The first principle

A citizen who comes to a government office is not asking for a favour but claiming a service that has already been paid for through taxes. A citizen's charter writes that claim down: what service is offered, to what standard, by when, and what the citizen can do if the promise is broken. Its ethics lies in turning the officer's discretion into the citizen's entitlement.

The core

• The movement began in the United Kingdom in 1991, when John Major's government launched the Citizen's Charter to make public services answer to their users. India adopted the idea at the Conference of Chief Ministers in 1997, and the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) has coordinated it since.
• Its principles are clear standards of service, information and openness, choice and consultation, courtesy and helpfulness, a way to put things right when they go wrong, and value for money.
• A charter is a promise, not a law. That is both its appeal and its weakness, which is why several states went further and passed right to services laws with penalties.
• Work culture is the set of shared habits in an office: whether people come on time, how files move and how citizens are treated. A charter changes nothing unless the culture behind the counter changes too.

Dimensions

• Ethical: a charter applies the values of accountability and courtesy to everyday service, and it tells the citizen what is owed rather than leaving it to the officer's mood.
• Administrative: published standards give managers a yardstick for performance and give staff a clear target.
• Democratic: consultation in drafting the charter makes users partners rather than petitioners.

In practice

• Sevottam: a framework developed by DARPG combining a charter, a grievance redress system and service delivery capability, built on the Bureau of Indian Standards norm IS 15700:2005 for public service organisations.
• Second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC), twelfth report "Citizen Centric Administration" (2009): it found most charters were drafted without consultation and were little known. It proposed a seven step Citizen Centricity Model for service delivery and, in substance, asked that charters be prepared in consultation with citizens, be specific about standards and be reviewed regularly.

• Right to services laws: Madhya Pradesh passed the first in 2010, and Bihar, Delhi, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and others followed in 2011. A designated officer must deliver a notified service within a fixed time, appeals lie to higher officers, and the officer at fault pays a fine.
• Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS): an online portal run by DARPG where a citizen can lodge a complaint against any central ministry and track it to disposal.
• The national bill that lapsed: the Right of Citizens for Time Bound Delivery of Goods and Services and Redressal of their Grievances Bill, 2011 lapsed with the dissolution of the Lok Sabha in 2014.

Issues and way forward

• Charters are drafted top down and then forgotten, because no one is answerable for keeping the promise. Draft them with users and frontline staff, review them yearly, and publish performance against each standard.
• No remedy for breach, because a charter is not law. Give key services statutory backing on the right to services model, with compensation paid to the citizen.
• Grievances are closed rather than solved, because disposal numbers are what get counted. Measure citizen satisfaction and reopen complaints closed without action.
• A culture of red tape and absence persists, since rules are followed for their own sake and delay carries no cost. Leadership by example, attendance tracking, simpler procedures and training in courtesy change the culture, as the matrix below shows.

Common confusions

• Citizen's charter and right to services law. The charter is a voluntary promise with no penalty; a right to services law is a statute that fixes deadlines and fines the officer who misses them.
• Sevottam and the seven step model. Sevottam is DARPG's framework of charter, grievance redress and capability; the seven step model is the Second ARC's recommended cycle from defining services to continuous improvement.
• Grievance disposal and grievance redress. Disposal means a file was closed; redress means the citizen's problem was actually solved.

For the exam

• Keyword bank: citizen's charter, service standards, consultation, grievance redress, Sevottam, IS 15700, seven step model, right to services, designated officer, CPGRAMS, work culture, red tape, citizen centric administration.
• Previous year questions: Practise the previous year questions on this topic →
• Introduction lines:
  • Madhya Pradesh became the first state to make public services a legal right in 2010, a step beyond the voluntary charters India had adopted in 1997.
  • The Second ARC's twelfth report (2009) put the citizen, rather than the department, at the centre of administration.
• Conclusion lines:
  • A charter on the wall is only a promise; a culture behind the counter is what keeps it.
  • When delay carries a cost for the officer and not only for the citizen, service delivery improves.