Bureaucracy in Nepal is always under fire. People have countless grumblings and grievances against them. Civil servants are often accused of being unaccountable, unethical, inefficient, corrupt and citizen-unfriendly. It seems very legitimate for people to point their fingers at civil servants because they pay taxes to fund their salaries, perks and allowances. Even a street vendor pays taxes through direct or indirect means. But, when the same citizen goes to seek services, either they dilly-dally or raise irrelevant objections or ask for "tea money" to expedite the service-delivery process.
Our bureaucracy is citizen-unfriendly, very lethargic and unaccountable to people. If anyone happens to get his/her work done without any bureaucratic hassles, there is enough room to rate him/herself the luckiest one. Many government offices, line agencies or public utility service providers, fail to deliver speedy services. When citizens visit government offices for soliciting service, officials with sullen faces often treat them indecently as if they are not worthy of even good behaviors or attention, let alone timely and quality service.
What are the reasons behind their unaccountability, in-hospitability and lack of service orientedness? Why do citizens visiting the government offices feel like being in an alien land? Why don´t they get cordial treatment and services on time? Is it due to understaffing, de-motivation, unwillingness or lack of trainings to work effectively? If we envision an accountable, transparent, effective and citizen-friendly bureaucracy in New Nepal, we must inculcate in them a universal concept that public service is structured to "serve rather than steer".
EXTERNAL ACCOUNTABILITY
When citizens visit government offices for soliciting services, officials with sullen faces often treat them indecently as if they are not worthy of even good behavior or attention, let alone timely and quality service.
Accountability factor is a crux of effective civil service. Failure to institutionalize external accountability culture within the civil service in the past has resulted in citizen-unfriendliness. Internal evaluation criteria at the discretion of senior civil servants to assess their subordinates´ performance for future promotions is one of the causative factors behind prevailing unaccountability toward the citizens. This practice has virtually increased "internal accountability" because of which civil servants are more hakim-friendly. Thus, development of a mechanism for citizen participation in evaluating civil servants´ performance will enhance external accountability among our bureaucrats that is grossly lacking now.
In order to promote external accountability by reducing their hakim-friendliness, internal evaluation system should be made more transparent and Adjusted Performance Assessment (APA) system needs to be introduced and encouraged in which internal performance record of the civil servants will be verified with external evaluation records made by the service users. As other tools, public hearings, citizen report card surveys and community score card methods can be used to increase their external accountability and harmonize relations with the service users down from the local level. Our bureaucracy has utterly failed to balance external and internal accountability. Accountability imbalance is highly perceptible and greater “accountability” of civil servants to their hakims and to the political leadership has overtly eroded their professional integrity and autonomy as well.
Also there is no strong "carrot and stick" policy because of which neither best performing civil servants get any reward nor any bad performing bureaucrats ever get due punishment. This has battered their zeal and motivation in delivering services to people. A Citizen Report Card survey conducted last year among 3,600 service users from six front-line government agencies in each six districts namely Okhaldhunga, Khotang, Dolakha, Ramechhap, Dailekh and Jajarkot revealed that 48 percent of them expressed bitter dissatisfaction with unruly behaviors of civil servants. This is just a snapshot reflection of the extent of citizen-unfriendliness and external accountability deficit at government institutions.
Another deficiency in civil service is strong monitoring and evaluation mechanism. Our bureaucracy has "input-based monitoring" system, which is more concerned with whether civil servants come to office on time or not. But we don´t have an "output-based monitoring" system that strongly focuses on their deliverables and products. Development of an output-based monitoring system within bureaucracy warrants greater productivity, effectiveness and performance on the part of civil servants. The Administration Reform Commission Report (ARC)-1992 has also strongly recommended developing ´performance agreement´ system to enhance accountability and improve output-based delivery of the civil servants. But it has not been implemented even in the last two decades. If ´performance agreement´ practice can be promoted in our civil service, its performance, accountability and service delivery will see major breakthroughs.
PARADIGM SHIFT NEEDED
Majority of new entrants view civil service as being secured and less challenging than the private sector jobs. This mentality is also one of the factors responsible for lethargic and inefficient performance on the part of civil servants. Until our civil service transforms itself from the "job-oriented" mentality to "service-oriented" culture, it would be extremely difficult to have drastic reforms in prevailing bureaucratic mannerisms and attitude. Our bureaucracy will continue to remain citizen-unfriendly unless civil servants are infused with a sense of external accountability through regular orientations and trainings that they are hired for providing services to people for which they are paid from citizens´ tax.
Another bizarre aspect of our bureaucracy is that many of the offices having direct public contacts do not have well-furnished "front-line service desks". These desks where people first approach entering the office are either neglected or placed in corners with no decorations at all. So, the reform should begin from refurbishing such front-line service desks where people first come in contact at offices. Our civil service has never made efforts to change itself from the perspective of people´s needs, accessibility and citizen friendliness.
The senior bureaucrats never hold empathic attitude toward the citizens. By practice, senior officials confine themselves to "cozy closets" during the office time and hardly supervise how their subordinates are working to serve the people. The system of "management by walking around" can be a good start to help the mangers have a first-hand experience of how public services are being delivered to the citizens, identify administrative lacunae and recommend corrections accordingly.
Capacity building also pays a key role in enhancing their capacity and efficiency. Basic Adjustment Training is being provided to all officer-level civil servants to familiarize them with the nature of work and responsibilities to be assigned to them. Such kind of trainings seems to have yielded quite frustrating outcomes as their capacity to deliver services to the people has not remarkably improved. The modules of trainings being provided to the civil servants should also be reformulated with focus on mannerisms and attitudes including customer dealing approaches.
Apart from a few pre-service and in-service trainings, civil servants hardly get any training for building their knowledge, attitude and skills. The case for senior officers is different as they often go abroad for trainings, workshops and seminars. But they just end up being tourists. Secretary and joint-secretaries of the ministry of women, children and welfare last year topped the list in foreign visits. Had they implemented even a quarter of their learnings back home, things would have been much different. The staffs being deployed at the front-line service desks, who are mostly non-gazetted officials, hardly get opportunities for exposure visits to hone their capacities and skills.
For creation of citizen-friendly administration, civil servants especially at the front-line service desks should be provided trainings to change their conceited attitudes and behaviors. Few government offices in the past and very lately the Supreme Court initiated "service with smile" approach. This was indeed a good start toward initiating a culture of citizen-friendliness but it also did not seem to work properly due to lack of trainings, logistics and commitment.
The painful reality in Nepal is that even after five ARC Reports since 1953 coupled with countless recommendations to improve effectiveness of the public administration, our bureaucracy has gone nowhere in the last six decades except with few cosmetic changes and improvements. The already existing five commission reports establish a fact that there is no dearth of suggestions, ideas and recommendations. Still, why a failure?
The flipside of this painful reality is that what was recommended in the last six decades was hardly put into practice. Some of the reports failed due to being highly rhetoric while others failed due to staggering political will. Thus, churning out hefty reports alone will do no wonders to refurbish the age-old lethargic bureaucratic system. What is required is a strong commitment and motivation at the government level to put them into practice to evolve transparent, accountable, effective and citizen-friendly civil service in new federal Nepal.
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