Karnataka Right to Services - Feedback. Summary - need money & IT

GoK may have pushed it to score points, may be that they rushed through the ordinance, but this is THE MOST important development in recent years on governance front. We all need to just get in on this to make sure this happens, and happens right. Most corruption starts with the "unwritten" right to denial of service that govt depts "hold", but still, this bill needs some realism or else it would end up being wishful thinking in its present state.

Just can't get the full text of the 'actual' ordinance or draft of proposed bill, so would assume that this one floating around is it. Referring to the bill as RSA (right to services act), here is a review cum wishlist. Summary - RSA can NOT succeed without lots of IT, and Participation.

A) Practical Aspects of Fixing deadlines

1. Without proactive disclosure of information concerning all aspects of services provided by it, any government department will struggle to deal with the flood of citizen requests with raised hopes after RSA is enacted
2. You can't fix deadlines for govt dept responsible for services without "re-engineering" the processes that run behind all services
3. To re-engineer the "process", the key input required is regular feedback on time taken by all steps in the processes
4. Generating such feedback requires real time monitoring of all "processes" that support the service in scope
5. Later, when deadlines may be adjusted for whatever reasons, data from these real time feedback mechanisms must be shared with citizens so that they see things for themselves and we don't get into rhetorical loop of debate
   1. In reality, the deadlines may need to be adjusted, and the mechanism and schedule for such adjustment needs to be transparent.
6. Further, these real time monitoring mechanisms must make all "operational data" visible to the public.

B) Transparent FIFO a must

1. The full queue of "active citizen requests" must be made visible to the public in as-real-time as possible.
2. The requests must be dealt with in FIFO manner. First in First Out.
3. Each request that is cleared, must leave the FIFO with a written document. Primary reason being that any rejection must leave a written reason, so that citizen can return with the corrections
4. List of all "requests" cleared in recent past (ex: last 1 month) must be proactively made transparent so that citizens prepare their requests after seeing recent precedents.

C) Service Guarantee Committees, per department, at district level (or even lower, depending on practicalities - budget)

1. Purpose of this Service Guarantee Committee (SGC) is to advise "Competant Authority" mentioned in chapter-2, clause 9 of the proposal
2. Each participating department must forward a report on rejections, FIFO violations and average completion times to the SGC on regular basis (Ex: monthly)
3. SGC could be constituted for each district, and should have adequate citizen representations in meetings to review the reports from all departments under RSA
4. "Competent Authority" has the right to accept or reject any recommendations from SGC, as long as it does so with written reasons.

D) Awards and Demotions

1. 10 or 20 rupee fine per day concept may not be effective enough
2. At the same time, government and citizens need to have positive incentives so that RSA can be successful
3. There could be awards at district level for best performing department.
4. A fund should be create for such awards, the award would be distributed to all employees of the winning department
5. SGC could judge the awards based on reports it reviews
6. At the same time, consistent failure to meet provisions of RSA should be marked as dereliction of duty
7. SGC should be empowered to recommend action against the constantly erring department. (possible? may conflict with some law that governs demotions and firing of govt employees)

E) Fund to support right of appeal for govt employees

1. A lot of litigation may be expected. Need measures to minimize them.
2. In case his/her appeal against the liability (20 rs a day thing) or demotion (if that's also possible) holds good, entire cost of legal process should be refunded to the concerned government employee
3. A fund could be created based on an expected rate of "over-rulings". 20% ?

This is about it. Without adding some or all of of above, the current RSA is a wishlist, it will lead to

• Spread of more negativity about government and governance as deadlines will be missed, arbitrary reasons will be sighted
• It is likely to generate a lot of grievances and appeals
• Government will be hard pressed to deal with grievances & appeals
• Even if the government manages to deal with them, cost to dispose each grievance or appeal will be very high.

PS: (Dec 5, 2011) Got hold of draft version of Karnataka Bill, attached below:

Karnataka Right to Services Bill 2011