Citizens’ engagement in public service delivery

Citizens play a critical role in advocating and helping to make public institutions more transparent, accountable, and effective, and contributing innovative solutions to complex development challenges of 21 century. Citizen's engagement is the annexation of the public in the activities of any institution that delivers services to the citizens. It pursues and facilitates the involvement of those potentially affected by or concerned in a decision. This can be an individual, institution, company, or any other entity that affects the public's interest. The principle of citizens' engagement embraces that those affected by a decision have a right to be involved in the decision-making process. It is regarded as more heads are better than one head concept.

Evidence shows that citizens' engagement improves access, responsiveness, inclusiveness, and accountability in delivering public services such as health, water, education, agriculture, anti-corruption drive, river protection, government land protection, asset protection, sustainable climate management, etc. It also improves transparency, accountability, and sustainability. Evidence also shows that making city council budgets at the local level by discussing with people gives more transparent, participatory, and pro-poor budgetary allocation. It holds officials accountable through programs like citizen report cards, social audits, public interest litigation, and public hearings types of events.

ADB has a well-established working experience with civil society representatives of Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Georgia, India, Indonesia, the Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Nepal, and the Philippines. They found positive results in citizens' engagement in public service delivery.

In some countries, citizens' engagement has become a central principle of public policymaking and the implementation process. Public institutions in UK and Canada in many cases, involve large-scale consultations or focus group discussions, public hearing, citizens scorecard, social audit, oversight committees etc in public policy monitoring process. The basic principle of this engagement is no one is unheard, leaving no one behind and where the mind is free and the head is held high.

Citizens' engagement is viewed as a tool, intended to inform beneficiaries, to measure attainable objectives, evaluate impact, and identify lessons for future practice. Most of the constitutions of the first world countries, including Bangladesh, contain fundamental laws of people's sovereignty, which means people are the ultimate source of authority, and they must not treat as simply passive recipients of policy decisions.

In United Kingdom citizens are engaged to ensure the fair and humane detention of prisoners. Volunteers comprise the Independent Monitoring Board that reports on the fair and humane detention of prisoners and detainees. The Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden, have provisions to hear people in many occasions that affect their life. New Zealand has numerous laws on health, local government, environmental management that require government officials to consult beneficiary or affected people.

Participatory budgeting directly involves citizens in making decisions about how public money should be spent. The aim of this initiative is to identify spending priorities and evaluating how the money was spent. "I Paid a Bribe.Com" is an online initiative in India which works with citizens to improve the quality of services. It focuses on India's urban infrastructure (road, drains, traffic, transport and water supply etc.) and calls for eliminating opportunities for corruption altogether. They can provide reports about bribes they paid, bribes they resisted and instances where they received a public service without paying a bribe. This web site has now been replicated in Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe as best practice.

Australian Centrelink is a "one-stop-shop" for the integrated provision by the Australian Government of various human services and social support payments through citizens' participation. It rapidly earned an international reputation for its cutting-edge approach to public service delivery. Sanitation facilities and irrigation in the Philippines follow this as best practice. It puts the government in a better position to deal with citizen in a proactive way which fosters a sense of belonging and a sense of empowerment, all of which strengthens trust in public offices.

In Bangladesh, Anti-corruption Commission constituted district and Upa-zila Corruption Prevention Committees at district and up-zila level comprising local honest and influential persons like retired college and school teachers, doctors, retired civil and army officers and interested persons of various professions those who have the interest to work against corruption voluntarily and who has proven track record of integrity in their own society. They use to arrange seminar, workshop and other social events for awakening people about the risk of corruption and its negative impact on the society. It has been seen from an impact study that these committees have been creating a strong influence over the society against corrupt practices.

An informed citizenry is essential for citizens' engagement, such as information relating to budget, economic and social data, procurement and contract award, audits, and rural and urban development projects. Evidences of ADB show that protection, repair, and construction work of river banks, protection of river itself from grabbers, haor embankment, local roads and bridge, forest land, local government property etc can be better managed by engaging citizen's committees alongside the supervision of government offices. Evidences show that this engagement can help reduction in corruption, increased transparency and accountability, and openness in public offices and finally a strong trust upon government. Grievance redress mechanisms are becoming more commonplace among citizens when they face any adverse situation in public office during service delivery. Public officials need to ensure that citizens are satisfied and their services are effective and efficient without any complaint. Better governance, more effective service delivery, greater social inclusion, and increased effectiveness of public financial management can be put in place by these citizen's committees. The government under the dynamic leadership of honorable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is relentlessly working hard for ensuring the welfare of all citizens, which mandates inclusive governance through various forms of service seeker's engagement.

The US Office of Science and Technology is driving the "Open Government Initiative" (OGI) to find new ways of tapping the knowledge and experience of ordinary Americans irrespective of any political affiliation. Case studies of Kerala of India show that citizen report cards increased teachers' attendance and quality education in schools. Uganda's experience shows that social audits can contribute to the exposure of corruption and effectiveness in the programme implementation process. Botswana budget monitoring initiatives improve budget transparency and awareness and enhance efficiency in public expenditure. In South Africa, public hearings of community-based societies ensured pure drinking water at home.

Citizens' engagement in the form of committees comprising affected or beneficiary citizens may be an excellent option to monitor concerned public service delivery and its effectiveness. Public offices may need an approved framework and regulation to do it proactively because a growing number of countries accept the concept of citizens' committees and get improved results and satisfaction. A consensus is emerging that citizen's engagement in each effort of service provisions can improve the overall effectiveness of governance, realization of value for public money and satisfaction of citizens at large.

The writer is a former Senior Secretary and currently teaching as an Adjunct Faculty at the Bangladesh Institute of Governance and Management (BIGM). He can be contacted at [email protected]