Legislation for better governance

Without well-managed public service delivery organisations, a trained and motivated workforce and efficient business processes to back it up, legislation by itself may lead to demotivation in the Government workforce as well as additional burden on an already stretched legal system

The recent public attention on the Lokpal Bill seems to have led to a disproportionate focus on legislation as being the primary, if not the only, means for bringing in good governance and improve public service delivery. A number of bills focusing on delivery of public services are proposed to be taken up for discussion in Parliament, notable among them being the Citizen's Right to Grievance Redress Bill and the Electronic Service Delivery Bill.

However, experience in countries considered to be front runners in governance clearly suggests that legislation is but one of the enablers for institutionalising good governance. Backing up legislation with (a) a trained and motivated workforce delivering services out of well managed organisations and (b) efficient processes for public service delivery has been found to be essential to provide efficient and effective public service delivery.

PERFORMANCE AND SALARY

Let us take up the first key enabler for good governance – people and institutions. As part of its Public Services for the 21{+s}{+t} century (PS 21) framework, employees were identified as a top priority by the Singapore Government. To attract talent, Government employees in Singapore are paid market-linked salaries. However, the salary includes a performance linked component which can be as high as 40 per cent.

This component of the salary as well as promotions is linked to an objective performance management system based on specific performance metrics derived from the objectives of the concerned Ministry/agency.

In Singapore, Public Service delivery is handled primarily by autonomous Boards (like the Health Promotion Board, which is under the Ministry of Health and manages various programmes on public health, nutrition etc.) which are held accountable to specific performance objectives, with the Ministries limiting themselves to policy setting and monitoring performance of these Boards. Similarly, in the UK, the David Cameron Government has identified “open public services” as one of its foremost objectives, based on the underlying principles of (a) using executive agencies for public service delivery which are separate from the policy making arm of the Government and (b) involving the private as well as the not-for-profit sector in public service delivery, thereby providing citizens the option to choose their service provider.

service delivery quality

Most public services in India continue to be delivered by Government Ministries or Departments which are also involved in regulation/policy formulation, although a start has been made in some cases to ring fence the two as in the case of the electricity sector.

Only a handful of States have reformed their personnel management practices in the areas of recruitment (handled through the respective State Public Service Commissions) and promotions (even today, annual confidential reports based primarily on subjective parameters seem to be the order of the day) as far as the State civil services are concerned. While the human resources practices followed for national services like the Indian Administrative Services etc. are no doubt superior, given their limited strength, it is primarily the State civil services and other State level cadres with whom the citizen has to interact with to avail public services.

As far as monitoring of service delivery quality is concerned, the Central Government has taken initial steps towards this by getting individual Ministries/agencies to adopt the Results Framework Document (RFD) in their annual plans. However, emphasis on critical output-related metrics needs to be increased. At the State level, only a few Governments have set up an institutional mechanism for centralised service quality monitoring.

Unless issues like the ones described above are addressed on a war footing, it may be difficult for individual Government officials to honour service delivery commitments to citizens although they may have been mandated through legislation. With both the Citizen's Right to Grievance Redress Bill and the Electronic Service Delivery Bill providing for personal penalties for designated officials in an event of non-compliance, the problem is likely to be aggravated further. Enactment of these legislations alone without putting in place the other pre-requisites for effective public service delivery could lead to widespread demotivation within the Government workforce as well as additional burden on an already stretched legal system as aggrieved officials strive to clear their name by approaching the courts.

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