One-stop shops and the human face of public services
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Delivering pension or disability services may sound mundane, but if you have seen the recent award-winning movie, I, Daniel Blake, it is anything but. As the film poignantly demonstrates, treating citizens with respect and approaching them as humans rather than case numbers is not just good practice -- it can mean life or death. In the film, Mr. Blake, an elderly tradesman with a heart condition, attempts to apply for a disability pension. In the process, he navigates a Kafkaesque maze of dozens of office visits, automated phone calls, and dysfunctional online forms. All of this is confusing and often dehumanizing.
Modern reform-minded governments try to re-imagine public service delivery from the point of view of service users, as the costs of failing to do so are too high. These governments do not take the dignity of their citizens lightly and look for ways to improve administrative service delivery.
. These centers act as a citizens’ primary contact point for accessing multiple public services and information, and vary in both scope and form. Some deliver a variety of services under one roof, others focus on a single sector, such as judicial or transport services. They can be operated by a central government or by municipal authorities and can target different groups such as citizens or firms.
A recent three-day peer-learning event, held in Singapore and Johor Bahru, Malaysia, provided the opportunity for practitioners to exchange their experiences with different models of One-Stop Shops. The workshop— co-organized by the UNDP Global Centre for Public Service Excellence, World Bank Group Global Knowledge and Research Hub in Malaysia, and Regional Hub of Civil Service in Astana—brought together practitioners from 29 countries around the world to talk about the future of citizen-centric service delivery and take stock of successes, challenges, and lessons learned from setting up One-Stop Shops.
The main takeaways include:
- Political leadership, government coordination, and a phased approach to implementation are critical. For reforms to be sustainable, high-level reform champions and steering committees must support coordination and communication among stakeholders, ensuring government ownership at all levels.
- Take a problem-driven approach and understand the broader context of the reform. When introducing One-Stop Shops, it is important to define one or more problems that the One-Stop Shops are expected to solve. This could include reducing time and administrative burden for citizens and businesses, improving access for rural and disadvantaged citizens, or reducing corruption. Depending on the underlying mix of problems, the design and purpose of the One-Stop Shops will differ. While factoring in the problems specific to the country, One-Stop Shops must also complement the governments’ broader administrative reform agenda.
- Implementation: feasibility and operational architecture. Once the problem and the objectives have been defined, countries with successful One-Stop Shops conducted a study to show the feasibility of this reform. The feasibility study usually explores whether business process re-engineering or simplifying administrative processes are needed, whether any adjustments to the policy and legal frameworks are required, and how the One-Stop Shop will be financed. After that, the government should choose the operational architecture for implementation. This means reviewing the options for integration of the available IT systems; securing broadband connectivity to enable data exchange across agencies; and ensuring interoperability so the databases can be used by different agencies and service providers. Significant improvements in the speed and quality of service delivery through One-Stop Shops can only be achieved with digitized databases and some existing interoperability.
For an in-depth analysis of the proceedings from the international peer-learning workshop on One-Stop Shops earlier this year, please see the resulting report.
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The apps or dissemination of information regarding public service often not specify person place phone no web address of people responsible to act as people registering the service requirement and actual people who have to deliver are different most of the time it is a trap to befool and avoid services to the delivery point. The registration to be made automatic and live systems to be created per law to pass on instructions, responsibility, and resources to implementing agency and the resolution to be monitored and data generated during the process to be constantly analyzed to improve the delivery through the dynamic system.
The interconnectivity of govt functions and reliable database is are issues facing developing countries. Governments have not keyed onto big data management.
The available data are not yet aggregated for informed planning. Once this is achieved, I believe these countries could leap onto better service delivery mechanisms.
This framework will drastically reduce cost of governance bedevilled with corruption in developing countries.
It's a wonderful piece.
Great idea, I have seen some colleagues in Uganda starting the same in the Public Service