Professional Developments: Public Feedback as an Aid to Public Accountability: Reflections on an alternate approach
✍ Scribed by K. Gopakumar
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1997
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 59 KB
- Volume
- 17
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0271-2075
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The gradual weaning away of the development trajectory from investment-led growth models focusing on the quantum of public expenditure to those emphasizing the roles of policy, information and awareness, improved decision making and active involvement of the civil society, has necessitated a need for a rethinking on the mode of evaluating public services. Issues pertaining to accessibility, effectiveness and responsiveness are increasingly coming under analytical scrutiny. The Report Card Approach is an attempt towards this direction. The leitmotif underlying the approach is to demonstrate how `voice' mechanisms can be used to demand better service and greater accountability from public service providers.
The approach was pioneered by Dr. Samuel Paul who founded the Public Affairs Centre (PAC), a not-for-pro®t and independent research and action support organization in 1994, at Bangalore, India, by transplanting the market research technique used extensively in the private sector into the public arena. The approach envisages the following objectives:
. to generate citizen feedback on the degree of satisfaction with the quality of services provided by various public service agencies . to provide a potent instrument to assess and highlight qualitative and quantitative dimensions of public service delivery in a community . to catalyse citizen groups to a pro-active stance by demanding more accountability, accessibility and responsiveness from public service providers . to serve as a diagnostic tool for service providers and external consultants to facilitate effective prognosis and therapy . to encourage public agencies to adopt client-friendly practices and policies, design performance standards and facilitate increased transparency in operations.