Ensuring access and responsibility to improve governance - GovtVacancy.Net

Ensuring access and responsibility to improve governance

Government departments should be accessible to the public and should be responsive to their needs and  aspirations. Along with this they  should also be responsible for prompt resolution of complaints. In order to ensure this, it is necessary that the  facilities, concessions and rights available in each department should be made public along with the methodology of  obtaining and redressal of grievances and  the details of those authorities. Taxes should be paid in the area that is competent to approve them  . Service standards need to be defined. It should be necessary for each department to  take steps to understand the problems of the customers,  to determine the criteria that that department will adhere to in the provision of its services and Contract the terms that the customer will fulfill in order to comply with them. If  the customer wants any other solution, the methodology for appealing  should also be indicated. It is also necessary to ensure that the applications are disposed of in time  . To do this, time-limits  should be prescribed for disposal of different categories of applications. The Rustomjee Committee on Administrative Reforms had identified  187 services required by the citizens in various departments and  fixed time limits for their disposal. The timeline was compiled and the government brought  out a booklet on 'Timeline', which was distributed to all government departments and representatives of the public  . Determining the time-frame for providing these details in each department There is a need to re-emphasize and  continue such an effort to make it available in all offices and on the Internet. The campaign of Citizen's Charter for various services  would be a right step in this direction.

 

Various small measures are  possible to improve transparency in government offices. Help tables at the next level, prominent display of names of officers, automatic  call centers and simplified computerized systems of service delivery are steps in the right direction. It should be avoided to concentrate those  works in a few hands which lead to corruption. These tasks should, as far as possible, be divided into activities, which are carried out by different people  . Interaction with the public should be confined to the head of the office and a few designated officers  . This can be implemented by a "single window front office" to provide information  .

 

 

Public outreach of government servants should be designed in such a way as  to ensure regular, time bound and sympathetic interaction between citizens and government functionaries  . Towards this end the business process in government departments  should be revamped so that bank office functions are segregated and completed in a  time bound manner  with minimum scope for prudence on 'first come, first served' basis Whereas the Front Office  will be a "single window" for providing services to the entire public.

 

 

The recommendations related to the fourth report of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission-

(Related recommendations in Fourth Report of the 2nd ARC)

 

1. Service providers should centralize their activities so that all services  can be delivered at a single point. Such common service points  can also be outsourced to an agency, which  can be given the task of taking up the requests of the citizens with the agencies concerned.

 

2. Such tasks, which spread corruption, should be divided into different activities  , which can be further assigned to different people.

 

3. Public contact should be restricted to authorized officers. A “Single Window Head Office” should be set up in all the departments to provide information and services to the citizens with file monitoring system  .

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