Government at the doorstep of citizens
The public sector is regarded as the world’s largest service provider. It is a fact that efficiency of governments is no longer measured in terms of revenue it generates but it’s efficiency in delivering various services. However improvements in public service delivery are also reflected in the GDP of the country as well. Making the service delivery hassle free to citizens through transparent, affordable, and accountable manner shall be the core agenda of governments. This requires developing technology enabled customer-centric models in par with private sector which are putting citizens at the heart of service delivery design. It was in this realization government of Delhi has initiated an innovative scheme known as the doorstep delivery of public services which is a first of the kind in the country. The main purpose of the scheme is to improve transparency, accountability, and responsiveness of the government and to add inclusiveness in the public service delivery system by ensuring equitable access to disadvantaged sections especially women, scheduled categories, and the poor.
How it works
The doorstep delivery of public services programme is designed in a way that people can avail various government services at their doorsteps doing away from visiting offices, approaching touts/intermediaries, and get rid from bribing officers. This is a great relief to common public as they don’t want to be in the brave snaking queues or taking leave from their work for getting their services done from government. They just want to book their appointment for the government representative through the 24x7 call centre number 1076, online or any of the designated government offices. Government representative called ‘mobile sahayak’ will visit their doorsteps during their preferred slots between 7.00 A.M to 10.00 PM. Now the applicants can handover the required document to the mobile sahayak for further processing. The services will be get delivered in fifteen days. The scheme now covers seventy services from twelve departments including all services from revenue and transport department like caste certificate, income, domicile and marriage certificates, new water connections, driving license, vehicle registration, scholarships, pensions etc. Applicants have to appear before the officer in certain services like driving licence and marriage registration where physical presence is mandatory. Citizens will be charged with a nominal amount of fifty rupees as facilitation charges which is subsidized by the government.
No visit no queue no touts
The scheme is historic in various ways. Earlier citizens had to spend a huge amount of time and money including for travelling to avail certain government services. The opportunity costs involved like availing off or loosing livelihood are also need to be considered. Apart from this, the extra fees they had to incur for computer centre charges, informal intermediaries, bribes etc. It is revealed that an average of four times an applicant had to visit offices for getting their services delivered and to spend thousands if touts are involved. This exploitation was basically due to the lack of knowledge and unfamiliarity towards technical terms and low digital literacy. Once the full fledged call centre and mobile sahayayaks were in place such concerns become weeded out and the scheme emerged as a one stop solution for government services. The doorstep scheme brought a grinding halt to tentacles of touts and eventually corruption. Presence of touts sharply reduced after the launch of the programme as citizen has easy access to the government services at very reasonable cost.
Accountability and transparency
The department of the administrative reforms and public grievances, GOI has provided a systematic approach to improving public services which are applicable to all the central and state governments known as the Sevottam framework (Indian Standard IS: 15700: 2005). In order adhere to the principles the doorstep service scheme also incorporated the citizen charter, grievance redresses system, and service delivery standards. Timely delivery of services is always a paramount concern of the public. Delhi is one of the states where right to time bound services is assured. Compared to other windows the doorstep scheme is maintaining a minimum SLA period (deadline for delivering the service) of fifteen days for all services where as the former was exceeding thirteen days in many cases. The same is subjected to the scrutiny of public as it comes under the ambit of right to information act. Furthermore applicant can view the real time status of their application through online or from call centre. As per the e-SLA rule respective officers are also liable for penalization in case of breaching of SLA. It is also crucial to have a strong system of redress of public grievances which incorporated in the scheme. During the last one year Delhi government has disposed on 2.15 lakh requests, completing around 99.5% of the services booked. Receiving around 13.69 lakh calls, the call centre became an information disseminator in public service delivery.
A good public private partnership model
The scheme is also an emulating model in public private partnership as the front end operations and technical supports are outsourced to an external agency through a competitive bidding process. Being domain expertise and experience, technical strength, and financial propositions were the prime criteria for selecting the agency, it enabled the smooth functioning of the programme. It also improved the performance and process of public service delivery aided by technology. Within a short span of time the doorstep delivery scheme evolved as an excellent public service design in government.
The doorstep service delivery scheme has made a paradigm shift in citizen-centric governance approach being an instrument of empowering citizens. The biggest challenge faced in public service delivery was of lack of awareness among the public and effective vertical and horizontal convergence of institutions. Being a new initiative in the governance it takes time to percolate to public. The task of sensitizing people to get rid from the concerns regarding procedural ambiguity, patterns followed for a long time for availing public services, and misinformation by intermediaries was huge. Our government is in a pursuit of massive awareness mode to empower citizens to sensitize about their rights. It was equally important the continuous capacity building and consultations among government officials to build trust and cooperation. Government is now moving ahead with plan of making doorstep the single window for all kind of public services to make sure that citizen is at the centre of governance.
The public sector is regarded as the world’s largest service provider. It is a fact that efficiency of governments is no longer measured in terms of revenue it generates but it’s efficiency in delivering various services. However improvements in public service delivery are also reflected in the GDP of the country as well. Making the service delivery hassle free to citizens through transparent, affordable, and accountable manner shall be the core agenda of governments. This requires developing technology enabled customer-centric models in par with private sector which are putting citizens at the heart of service delivery design. It was in this realization government of Delhi has initiated an innovative scheme known as the doorstep delivery of public services which is a first of the kind in the country. The main purpose of the scheme is to improve transparency, accountability, and responsiveness of the government and to add inclusiveness in the public service delivery system by ensuring equitable access to disadvantaged sections especially women, scheduled categories, and the poor.
How it works
The doorstep delivery of public services programme is designed in a way that people can avail various government services at their doorsteps doing away from visiting offices, approaching touts/intermediaries, and get rid from bribing officers. This is a great relief to common public as they don’t want to be in the brave snaking queues or taking leave from their work for getting their services done from government. They just want to book their appointment for the government representative through the 24x7 call centre number 1076, online or any of the designated government offices. Government representative called ‘mobile sahayak’ will visit their doorsteps during their preferred slots between 7.00 A.M to 10.00 PM. Now the applicants can handover the required document to the mobile sahayak for further processing. The services will be get delivered in fifteen days. The scheme now covers seventy services from twelve departments including all services from revenue and transport department like caste certificate, income, domicile and marriage certificates, new water connections, driving license, vehicle registration, scholarships, pensions etc. Applicants have to appear before the officer in certain services like driving licence and marriage registration where physical presence is mandatory. Citizens will be charged with a nominal amount of fifty rupees as facilitation charges which is subsidized by the government.
No visit no queue no touts
The scheme is historic in various ways. Earlier citizens had to spend a huge amount of time and money including for travelling to avail certain government services. The opportunity costs involved like availing off or loosing livelihood are also need to be considered. Apart from this, the extra fees they had to incur for computer centre charges, informal intermediaries, bribes etc. It is revealed that an average of four times an applicant had to visit offices for getting their services delivered and to spend thousands if touts are involved. This exploitation was basically due to the lack of knowledge and unfamiliarity towards technical terms and low digital literacy. Once the full fledged call centre and mobile sahayayaks were in place such concerns become weeded out and the scheme emerged as a one stop solution for government services. The doorstep scheme brought a grinding halt to tentacles of touts and eventually corruption. Presence of touts sharply reduced after the launch of the programme as citizen has easy access to the government services at very reasonable cost.
Accountability and transparency
The department of the administrative reforms and public grievances, GOI has provided a systematic approach to improving public services which are applicable to all the central and state governments known as the Sevottam framework (Indian Standard IS: 15700: 2005). In order adhere to the principles the doorstep service scheme also incorporated the citizen charter, grievance redresses system, and service delivery standards. Timely delivery of services is always a paramount concern of the public. Delhi is one of the states where right to time bound services is assured. Compared to other windows the doorstep scheme is maintaining a minimum SLA period (deadline for delivering the service) of fifteen days for all services where as the former was exceeding thirteen days in many cases. The same is subjected to the scrutiny of public as it comes under the ambit of right to information act. Furthermore applicant can view the real time status of their application through online or from call centre. As per the e-SLA rule respective officers are also liable for penalization in case of breaching of SLA. It is also crucial to have a strong system of redress of public grievances which incorporated in the scheme. During the last one year Delhi government has disposed on 2.15 lakh requests, completing around 99.5% of the services booked. Receiving around 13.69 lakh calls, the call centre became an information disseminator in public service delivery.
A good public private partnership model
The scheme is also an emulating model in public private partnership as the front end operations and technical supports are outsourced to an external agency through a competitive bidding process. Being domain expertise and experience, technical strength, and financial propositions were the prime criteria for selecting the agency, it enabled the smooth functioning of the programme. It also improved the performance and process of public service delivery aided by technology. Within a short span of time the doorstep delivery scheme evolved as an excellent public service design in government.
The doorstep service delivery scheme has made a paradigm shift in citizen-centric governance approach being an instrument of empowering citizens. The biggest challenge faced in public service delivery was of lack of awareness among the public and effective vertical and horizontal convergence of institutions. Being a new initiative in the governance it takes time to percolate to public. The task of sensitizing people to get rid from the concerns regarding procedural ambiguity, patterns followed for a long time for availing public services, and misinformation by intermediaries was huge. Our government is in a pursuit of massive awareness mode to empower citizens to sensitize about their rights. It was equally important the continuous capacity building and consultations among government officials to build trust and cooperation. Government is now moving ahead with plan of making doorstep the single window for all kind of public services to make sure that citizen is at the centre of governance.
