Developing citizen-centric public administration

There has been a paradigm shift from traditional hierarchical bureaucratic public administration to a citizen-centric modern public administration. This has happened due to globalisation, rapid technological advancements, rising expectations of the citizens from the public servants in terms of better service delivery and fiscal pressures to deliver services at reduced cost. All these factors have compelled today's civil service to change its profile significantly. Almost all developing nations have realised that to cope with the challenges of the 21st century and also to meet the demands and expectations of the citizens, reinventing the public sector is essential. The Government of Bangladesh through its Vision 2021 reflects these realities.
It is difficult to improve public service delivery overnight. An effective public service essentially nurture innovation for improving performance over time, increasing responsiveness to changing conditions and also overcoming social challenges through partnership. To promote and encourage innovative undertakings in accomplishing governance reforms effectively and improving public service delivery, the government of Bangladesh in 2012 established the Governance Innovation Unit (GIU) in the Prime Minister's Office. Empowering citizens is at the core of this entity.
GIU's key partners are the Pathfinder Ministries (PFMs) that have the most direct interaction with citizens. These are: Ministry of Agriculture, Education, Health and Family Welfare, Home Affairs, Land, Primary & Mass Education, Local Government Division and the Ministry of Disaster Management & Relief. The Focal Points (FPs) of the PFMs are responsible for maintaining the momentum and liaise with their clients. The Work Improvement Teams (WITs) of the PFMs are assigned to bring qualitative changes to the work culture of the civil servants through encouraging and motivating peers, making suggestions for cutting red tape, improving service delivery and identifying success stories.
The Divisional Commissioners and Deputy Commissioners are the major players of GIU's communication strategy. Divisional Commissioners are instrumental in ensuring the outcomes of good governance and innovative initiatives. The Deputy Commissioners maintain liaison, rapport and coordination with the representatives of private sector organisation, NGOs (non-governmental organsations), academia, civil society, business community, women entrepreneur and media to implement the policy suggestions of the GIU. Both Divisional Commissioners and Deputy Commissioners are putting their best endeavours to disseminate GIU's role towards improving service delivery through innovative approaches at the grassroots level. Their proactive role in implementing some of the GIU's recommendations such as ensuring formalin free food for the citizens, introducing mid-day meal programme in the Primary schools, restraining early marriage, ensuring foolproof security measures at the field level are truly commendable.
As part of Liaison and Outreach programme, GIU is networking with various Training Institutes including Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre (BPATC), Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) Academy, Foreign Service Academy, Police Staff College, and NAEM. International Organisations such as UNDP, USAID, JICA and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government are also its partners.
The Unit has made a robust effort to identify innovations that have been successful at the local level and are ready for scaling up. GIU has undertaken its search through three main initiatives:
REFORM PROPOSALS FROM PATHFINDER MINISTERS:  Governance Innovation Unit held meetings with the secretaries of the PFMs.  In addition, it organised a series of interactive meetings with the FPs and WITs of the PFMs. These ministries have been identifying and nurturing different reform initiatives.
USING CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOPS AND TRAININGS TO DISSEMINATE INNOVATIVE IDEAS:  GIU in collaboration with the CSCMP, MoPA has so far conducted divisional workshops in Dhaka, Chittagong, Sylhet, Khulna and Rangpur. It organised two workshops titled "Citizens' Charter Implementation & Service Process Simplification Methods and Techniques" in Sylhet and Bogra. The rationale was to disseminate the concept among the public servants that fast, efficient, hassle-free service to the citizens at reduced cost and also within the existing legal framework is possible through innovations. In addition, GIU has conducted a number of field visits for exploring the ideas and their implementation.
This Unit has organised Executive Education Programme on "Strategic Leadership for Innovation in the Public sector" tailored to the needs of the senior and mid-level civil servants. The programme was conducted by Dr. Jorrit de Jong and Dr. Linda Kaboolian, renowned governance specialists from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The purpose was to equip them with the skills to identify pragmatic solutions approach to social challenges that confront the public sector. The core groups comprising 28 officials identified seven individual cases (Ministry of Relief & Disaster Management was inducted afterwards as a new PFM) as Innovation Challenge Proposals for implementation.
GIU has also organised a Training Programme on Innovation Concepts & Practices of Government Officials for the public servants of Bangladesh. Around 720 government officials participated in this three month long training course. The purpose was to instill a culture of innovation among the civil servants.
CONDUCTING NATIONWIDE SEARCH FOR INNOVATIVE PROPOSALS: Since inception, Governance Innovation Unit has been compiling successes and best practices on creativity enhancement of the government activities. To this end, it has sought success stories and proposals from all public sector organizations emphasizing on novelty, effectiveness, significance, replicability, sustainability and service process simplification with a view to improving service delivery, reducing costs or transforming agency performance. To date, GIU has received numerous innovative proposals from various public sector organizations. These are being meticulously reviewed by the officials with due importance. It has already sent some of the proposals to the concerned ministries for proper implementation. Moreover, GIU has received a number of success stories from the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Agriculture, Home Affairs, Education, Primary & Mass Education and Land. Some of the innovative proposals are nearing completion.
OTHER ACTIVITIES: GIU has assigned the Pathfinder Ministries to formulate Innovation Plans to implement their proposals in an efficient and time-bound manner. To date, this Unit has arranged Stakeholder Consultation meetings on Ensuring Formalin-free food to the citizens, Simplification of Passport Delivery Service and Restraining Early Marriage. A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was recently signed among the Governance Innovation Unit (GIU), the Public Administration Department of Dhaka University and the Civil Service Change Management Programme (CSCMP) of the Ministry of Public Administration. As per the agreement, final-year students of the Public Administration Department have been provided with two consecutive orientation sessions on the concepts, ideas and practices of Public Service Innovation jointly conducted by the faculties of Public Administration Department, GIU officials and the CSCMP personnel. The officials of GIU shared the mandate and vision of the GIU as well as its role and responsibility in Public Service Innovation during these orientation sessions. In addition, a small group of final year students has been selected as interns in the GIU. Under this internship programme, they will participate and contribute in relevant research and studies, in cooperation with GIU and the Path Finder Ministries. The areas for joint research will encompass issues relevant to Public Service Innovation. If properly implemented, this Programme will definitely create a platform for the academics and the practitioners to share their views on citizen centric service delivery.
With a view to encouraging and inspiring the public servants to improve citizen satisfaction with services, GIU intends to formulate a Recognition Policy in near future.                                                                                            
The writer is Director, Governance Innovation Unit, Prime Minister's Office. [email protected]