|
|
| Improving Access to Public Services |
12/21/2007 |
|
“The best minds are not in Government. If they were, business would hire them anyway” (Ronald Regan, former US President)
The first week of November a Worldwide Thematic Conference took place in The Hague, attended by public servants, academicians, scholars, social and other services practitioners, scientists and by my humble self. The over sixty participants had come from all over the world, invited by the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation, of the Havard University of the United States of America, in collaboration with the Centre for Government Studies of Leiden University, which hosted the conference at it’s the Hague Campus.
Governments all over the world are constantly designing new programs and services or stubbornly continuing old ones, which turn out not to be effective or worse, not to reach the people they were intended for, improvements seldom take place.
The conference at The Hague proved that the above quote is not always true, there are plenty of examples where people working in government found extremely smart ways to improve efficiency and quality of services and particularly improve access of those that needed it.
This is what the gathering concentrated on, how to improve access to public services.
Proceedings featured presentations grouped in four different panels, each dealing with an aspect of access, as Access to the Economy, Access to Justice, Access for (dealing with) the Disadvantaged and Access through Technology.
In the short space of twenty four hours over three days, we were presented with twelve innovative examples of services and programs from different parts of the world, which were then commented upon and discussed by the participants.
What were some of these innovations?
For Access to the Economy, what to think of the ‘One Stop Shop for Hotel, Restaurant, Café, Licenses, from the City of Amsterdam? This meant that the jungle of operating licences for this popular access to the economy in the City of Amsterdam was reduced to filling a form with twenty questions to determine which of the forty licences would be needed. The now infamous story of the migrant entrepreneur who wanted to start a sandwich bar, but got stuck in bureaucratic red tape, till his money ran out, was a case in point that the innovation was necessary.
From Mexico, we were told how the Rural Microfinance Technical Assistance Project succeeded in providing access to Savings-Based Financial Services for the rural poor.
In stead of the usual credit provision, emphasis was put on a savings-based integrated high quality financial service with strict controls and stimulation of local institutions.
The Access to Justice Panel saw the case of the “Overt Drug Market Strategy” in North Carolina in the USA. Street level drug dealing collapsed through the innovative method of confronting the young offenders with the displeasure and other feelings of the community.
Waste Recyclers in Bogotá were given access to justice by being enabled to take part in a public tender and have their associations perform commercial services.
In Dealing with Disadvantaged, the case of “America Works, U.S.A.” demonstrated how it is possible to take people off welfare assistance and put them into work. It adopted the philosophy of “work first” and offered their services on a performance basis and showed how they as a company could make a profit at the same time.
Again in Mexico ‘Opportunidades’ succeeded in improving the quality of life of rural poor, by linking assistance to school attendance and family health checkups.
In Access through Technology, particularly through ICT (information and communication technology), there were also smart ways to innovate public services.
In the Netherlands many elderly who are only on state pension, to which all Dutch citizens are entitled, are not claiming the social assistance they could be entitled to. The Social Insurance Bank, responsible for paying the state pension partnered with a number of City Councils responsible for administering the social assistance and combined their resources to improve public service delivery by disbursing both payments.
In Brazil in the State of Bahia Citizen Assistance Service Centres were created in various public places to streamline access to a large variety of public services, for which otherwise several offices needed to be visited. This not only improved service delivery in cities, but gave people in rural areas access to services they never had before.
The above shows that, despite a common perception, government really can work and services can be improved, if only the citizen is being put in the centre. Services need to be looked at from the perspective of the users to know how they experience it, before improvement or even better innovation can take place.
Unfortunately there were no examples from Africa, but there is no reason why these things can not happen in Africa. It requires a change of mindset for most ordinary civil servants, as their attitude is often one of sitting on the ‘treasure chest’ which they only reluctantly open and then mostly only after having their palms ‘oiled’. In stead of realising that they are SERVING the public as civil servant, they are as a child erroneously put it, a ‘civil serpent’.
Governments exists by the grace of the people in a democratic system, which makes government services a democratic right and commits the governments to give their people access to these services as good as they can.
As mentioned earlier the conference gathered government innovators from all over the world, even a few from Africa. The four panels with the twelve presentations were held simultaneously to allow us to listen to all, ask questions and discuss in smaller groups.
Cost effectiveness and sustainability were often questioned, but the argument that it has to be done before one can know the results, made sense. Others mentioned that some of the presentations were perhaps more ‘best practises’ than real innovations, but though that may be so the improvement of access to the public service still stands firm.
Finally the conference strengthened not only the Global network of Government Innovators, but also increase personal networks and gave all participants incredible food for thought, and perhaps even inspiration for new government innovations!
By Ato Bob
|
|
|
|
| Comments | Post your comment |
|
|
|
