Transparency in Government: Right to Information, Citizen’s Charters

Answer: The concept of a Citizen’s Charter enshrines the trust between the service provider and its users. A Citizen’s Charter outlines the service commitment of organizations or service providers towards providing quality, high-standard services, including mechanisms for grievance redressal. Ethical principles on which the Citizen’s Charter is formulated are:

• Quality: It focuses on improving the quality of services by setting adequate standards. It also specifies what to expect and how to act if the standards are not met.
• Choice: Wherever possible, it encourages access and promotion of choice.
• Value: It aims at gaining value for the taxpayers’ money.
• Accountability: It envisages accountability of the concerned individuals and organizations.
• Transparency: There is transparency with regard to rules, procedures, schemes, and grievances.

The purpose of a Citizen’s Charter as outlined by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) are as follows:

• Citizen-friendly system: To construct a systematic effort to focus on the commitment of an organization towards its citizens.
• Ensuring accountability: To provide a system of enforcement to monitor the developments and ensure that they are in compliance with the rules.
• Empowering the citizens: This is done by encouraging the members of the public to express their views freely on the difficulties faced by them in getting their work done in public offices and in availing public services.

The Citizen’s Charter has increased the participation of the common man in the efficient working of an organization by making the citizens aware of the aims and goals of the organization. Further, it has helped in reducing corruption by ensuring transparency and accountability and has also led to a citizen-friendly system in order to promote good governance. However, there have been certain shortcomings with respect to its effective implementation, such as:

• Lack of a consultative process: It has become a “one size fits all” document without regular consultation with all the stakeholders.
• Non-sensitized and untrained staff: Commitments of the Charter cannot be expected to be delivered by a workforce that is unaware of the spirit and content of the Charter.
• Inadequate publicity of the Charters: In most departments, the Charter has not been given the required publicity.
• Bureaucratic hurdles: Frequent transfers and reshuffling of the concerned officers at the crucial stages of formulation/implementation of the Citizen’s Charter hamper the progress of the initiative.
• Unrealistic standards: This has created an unfavorable impression on the users as the high standards that are set in the Charter have not been met.

A Citizen’s Charter essentially focuses on the rights of the public and the obligations of the public servants. Redesigning, re-engineering, and restructuring the Charter by providing wider consultation and awareness generation through customer surveys and customer Councils, including an external review process, involving and empowering frontline employees and their capacity building through training and building on new skills will be required to make it more dynamic and citizen-friendly.