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India
oi-Vicky Nanjappa
Governance fashions embodying legacy democracy have outlived their enchantment. Right this moment, as the thrill grows louder round digital governance with the deployment of area of interest applied sciences, governments are rebooting concepts and constructions to interact deeper and higher with the residents.
While industries are quick shifting gears from analogue to digital, responsive governments are transferring from consultant democracy to participatory democracy. It is huge and steady change administration anchored on a digital platform however pushed by the cultural and behavioural transformation of how governments reply to residents’ suggestions to boost public service supply.
Know-how is an enabler on this change, however there are different levers within the authorities toolkit to steer citizen empowerment rooted in inclusion. The times when authorities establishments awaited suggestions from the persons are passé. Now we have stepped into a brand new daybreak of governance the place the federal government’s stand is shifting from ‘reactive’ to ‘proactive’. Put up-Covid, the world round us is remodeling.
The pandemic has not solely disrupted companies and economies but in addition examined governance constructions. How responsive governments are to residents’ expectations and the way swift they’ll act is the problem. Participative democracy has gained a lot traction over the previous few years, particularly after the rising bipartite digital interface between the federal government and residents on social networks.
Nations like Taiwan have invested closely in a ‘tech-enabled civic tradition’ marked by bottom-up info sharing, public-private partnerships, and participatory collective motion. Offline, the rise of citizen assemblies within the UK and participatory budgeting in Paris and Madrid corroborate the citizen participation story in democracy.
The Indian authorities, too, is shopping for into this story. By increasing the motto of ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwaas’ to now embody ‘Sabka Prayas’, the federal government underscores the significance of citizen contribution to nation-building.
Governments at all times had the mandate. The United Nations Sustainable Growth Aim (SDG) 16.6 envisages the event of efficient, accountable and clear establishments in any respect ranges. However the finer element is in level 16.6.2 that proposes to measure the proportion of the inhabitants happy with their final expertise of public companies.
With this credo, the Odisha authorities has rolled out the Mo Sarkar (or My Authorities) programme. Mo Sarkar is one up on different citizen engagement drives because it builds on individuals’s suggestions to repair accountability on officers and enhance the design and supply of public companies.
Mo Sarkar- a brand new epoch in participative governance
In laidback governance constructions, residents are simply passive topics. There isn’t any mechanism to elicit their suggestions on the standard of companies accessible at public establishments like hospitals or police stations. Mo Sarkar seeks to dismantle this notion barrier by utilizing a randomised suggestions system the place ministers (The Chief Minister included!) and top-ranked officers name up residents to gauge their expertise in availing public companies.
In additional methods than one, Mo Sarkar is a watershed reform in responsive governance, empowering residents to have a direct dialogue with the authorities and voice their discontent. With its thrust on citizen centricity, Mo Sarkar matches properly into Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s 5T governance paradigm- transparency, know-how, teamwork, and time-bound motion resulting in transformation.
It’s a one-of-its-kind initiative began by the Odisha authorities to inject professionalism and a sustained behavioural change in public workplaces and functionaries by a random suggestions mechanism that immediately connects the federal government with the residents. Citizen suggestions serves because the cornerstone in working Mo Sarkar and helps to inch nearer to the coveted aim of fine governance.
Making officers responsive and accountable
Mo Sarkar mandates that any citizen visiting public workplaces will likely be handled with dignity and their issues could be dealt with in an moral and time-bound method. The federal government authorities, after looping in public suggestions, swing into motion.
Mo Sarkar captures the cellphone quantity and demographics of the aggrieved residents. Their particulars are shared with officers in any respect tiers of the state administration, starting from the Chief Minister’s Workplace to the district officers. This initiative in participative democracy is high pushed because the chief minister personally makes random calls to determine if the complaints had been redressed on time and in an expert method to the satisfaction of the complainants.
The scheme makes use of the time-honoured ‘carrot & stick strategy to repair accountability on the officers. Officers delivering high quality companies to the residents are rewarded whereas motion is initiated in opposition to errant public functionaries who falter of their duties.
The efficiency appraisal report (PAR) of officers is linked to their responsiveness and alacrity in coping with dissatisfaction lodged by residents. Twenty per cent of the weightage of the officers’ PAR is earmarked for the 5T constitution of governance, of which 5 per cent is for his or her efficiency below Mo Sarkar.
Tech backbone- ‘Contact Centre’ for demographic inclusion
Mo Sarkar attracts power from an in depth system of citizen outreach by leveraging a tech-enabled, seamless contact centre. The contact centre is a extremely scalable system with enhanced technological help to register calls, improve caller’s expertise, computerized name distribution, and name recording and high quality evaluation.
The system establishes a direct interface between the residents and the federal government. It provides a centralised suggestions system that facilitates real-time interplay between residents and the federal government. Presently, the suggestions system covers 27 state departments and 250 companies.
Appearing as a unified repository of citizen particulars, it analyses the suggestions and perception into residents’ expectations. The presence of an efficient monitoring mechanism for guaranteeing accountability of the officers and performances of the division, thus optimising service supply and enterprise course of effectivity.
Utilizing the IVRS system, Mo Sarkar efficiently navigates the problem of demographic inclusion the place residents in distant places nonetheless face the digital divide.
Getting over challenges to create impression on floor
Earlier than the Mo Sarkar name centre was launched on October 2, 2019, the state administration confronted many challenges in its seamless implementation. There was no institutional set-up for amassing suggestions from the individuals. Disparate citizen knowledge streamed in from a number of sources, and there was no system or technique to consolidate the info.
Apart from the shortage of a decision mapping technique for citizen complaints, there was no mechanism to appraise officers liable for attending to residents’ suggestions. Mo Sarkar, nonetheless, has trumped the preliminary challenges to emerge as a groundbreaking scheme in public service supply, underpinned by a strong suggestions system titled contact centre.
This suggestions system has collated demographics of round 16 million residents with ministers and officers receiving a median of 10,000 suggestions calls every month.
The success of schemes like Mo Sarkar is testimony to a brand new wave of direct citizen participation sweeping the shores of our governance. The crowdsourcing of suggestions for reinforcing public service supply is slated to be the brand new regular for the government-citizen interface. Know-how married to temperament guarantees to alter the idiom of governance for the higher.
(The author is Secretary, Electronics & IT and Science & Know-how, and OSD to the Chief Minister, Odisha. He could be reached at mishramanoj@yahoo.com)
Story first revealed: Thursday, December 30, 2021, 12:10 [IST]
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