This post is in continuation to a previous post exploring the reasons for the poor quality of service delivery in Education and Health Care by Government agencies. This post will go further and argue that the quality of public service delivery is a major problem and challenge with most, if not all public services, and it will continue to be so. More so in developing countries. This post is also a response to the oft repeated, ignorant ramble in the media and among our opinion makers about the inherent inefficiency of Government systems. The villain is variously the politician or the Government official, but never the civil society.
My firm belief is that any judgement of our Government, its agencies, and personnel has to be done in the context of our civil society. It is cliched to say that in a democracy the people get the Government they deserve, and in many respects it is not too far from the truth. Here is why.
Any Government process has to meet the twin test of being standardized and having the lowest possible transaction time and cost. This dual test is a delicate balancing act, since any attempt to dilute one will have serious repurcussions on the other. If we try to make the procedures more rigorous, so as to eliminate all attempts at distortion and corruption, we will end up increasing the transaction times and costs. On the other hand, if we give a go by to procedures and established norms so as to expedite quicker service delivery, it will only open up the system to more rent seeking and malfeasance.
That there is potential for productivity and efficiency improvements in Government is self evident. There are a number of areas where even simple productivity improvements can have very large and visible/felt impact on the quality of service delivery. Improvements are possible both in the processes and the functionaries operating the process at each level.
I have attempted re-engineering of these processes and protocols involved in the issue of a birth or death certificate, trade licence, building permission, property tax assessment, title transfer, water and sewerage connections, and a few other public services delivered by an Urban Local Body. But surprisingly enough, apart from small tinkering, the established process and protocols for the delivery of these services are fairly efficient and effective. (However it is undeniable that the complexity of multiple bureaucratic layers certainly increases as we go up in the hierarchy to the State and the Central Governments) But with the functionaries, there are serious problems.
The most common and important Government welfare services are those like education, health care, anganwadis (child nutrition), Public Distribution System (PDS), issue of legal certificates like birth and death registrations, and other regulatory certifications. These are services where there is a direct interface of the individual citizen with Government agencies, and these functionaries are the public face of the Government. Their behaviour and attitude is taken to represent the repsonsiveness of Government itself to issues concerning its citizens. It is commonplace for citizens to experience difficulty in accessing these services and therefore carrying bitter memories of their interface with the Government. Invariably, in most instances of accessing such services they are dealing with individual Government functionaries. This experience can vary from inefficiency and lethargy, to rampant corruption.
As is evident, all these welfare and civic services delivered by Government and its agencies are labor intensive. The quality of these services are critically determinant on the personal initiative and ability of the field functionaries. In many ways, the most important functionaries of the Government, with respect to delivery of civic services, are those at the cutting edge of executing works or delivering them. Unfortunately, it is this category of officials who are the least motivated and the most inefficient. Even simple productivity improvements will have a dramatic impact on their work output. For example, all of them invariably have very poor work and time management skills, and there is limited emphasis on work quality. Their exposure to the latest and more efficient work organisation techniques and methods is limited, and this results in considerable duplication and easily avoidable time wastage. Very few officials at the field level are conversant (though most of them have been given the basic training in computers, less than 10% are able to use it in any meaningful manner, and the rest use it as a substitute for the typewriter!) with the use of the computers and the latest communication and other technologies, which can substantially improve their work output.
We therefore have a serious problem with the quality of service delivered by these field functionaries. Bureaucratic supervision and monitoring, coupled with use of technology through computerization etc, can improve efficiency and control lethargy and corruption only to an extent. The rest depends on the individual at the cutting edge of service delivery. It is impossible to have such micro-level supervision of every employee. In fact, very often in our quest for more transparency and efficiency, we end up adding more layers of bureaucracy.
To address this micro-level challenge, we need to develop more effective incentive-penalty structure for Government functionaries. More about this in another post. And more importantly, we need to inculcate a sense of civic responsibility and duty, among our citizens. The civil society has to become more responsive and robust, so that its members who become Government functionaries, exhibit a sense of civic duty in their workplace.
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