How to improve public service?

I have complained about the public service in India in my previous post. Now I want to propose some ideas and possible solutions to the problem. So here goes.

Understanding the problem is half the solution. Here are some questions for anyone who can make a difference in improving the interaction with public offices in India, if such individuals ever stumble upon this blog.

Goals
- Avoid/Reduce queuing
- Reduce turn around time for every customer to less than half hour in all public offices such as banks, electric/telephone utilities, train (reservation) stations, passport offices, etc.
- Help people who really need help.
- Handle elders, disabled, pregnant women, women with children as a priority.
- Empower people who can handle themselves.
- Behave courteously to all customers. Must have service with a smile. Indian public servants are notoriously uptight individuals.

Let's think in terms of some basic parameters to achieve these goals.

Understand Demand
Approximately how many people need to be serviced every day? If we can't estimate it based on the demographics, we should at least have a statistical number on the quantity. If that data doesn't exist yet, every regional office should start collecting that information. Count every single person who walks into the public office for service. It is important for every regional office to know the usual demand. Student interns such as NSS cadets can be used for such exercises.

Estimate the Cycle Time
The average time it takes for a customer to get in and out of the office. The goal is to reduce this time. Again, start recording the times. What is not measured cannot be improved.

Know the Capacity
Cycle time * number of work hours * number of office staff servicing the customers. This gives the maximum number of customers that can be serviced with the current staff level. If a single customer has to deal with multiple stations/staff to get the job done, individual station capacity should be estimated. Again, volunteers can help.

Know and control Utilisation
With a nominal 80% utilisation, how many customers can be served per day by the total number of staff in the office? This gives a more practical estimate of the capacity accounting for staff leave, late arrivals, lunch breaks, personal business time, etc.

Identify and eliminate Bottlenecks
Where do the incoming customers spend most of the time? Is it in getting the paper work filled up? Is it in deciding between the available choices? Is it in excessive internal handling time? Is it in the payment step? How can that be alleviated?

Conclusion
Once the above parameters are understood, I believe one of the common findings will be that our offices are generally under staffed. If most customers in the region (urban?) are educated and can handle themselves, automate the processes to delegate work to the customers. If most customers need a lot of help, invite volunteers, educated retirees like school teachers to help out the people in need. I am sure a lot of such people will come forward to help others. I see an opportunity for non-profit outfits to organize such efforts. Basically get help from the elements of the society to make life better for everyone.

Introduce some basic periodic training for the staff. They work to serve the people. Public servants should drop the feudal attitude. One effective way is to tie the customer feedback to the staff incentives and perks program. Institute such programs to encourage staff to change their behavior towards the public. Once people see benefit in checking their attitude, they will change quickly. The incentive need not be in terms of money. Invite sponsors from local businesses for discount coupons, cinema tickets, free meals, etc. It serves as an advertisement vehicle for local businesses and an enormous moral boost for the employees to win such awards by serving people with a smile.

So without requiring any increase in funding or staff level, things can be improved dramatically. Public offices should come forth to work closely with the NGOs to benefit from them and serve people better.

Of course, the first step is to recognize that wasting time unproductively waiting for mundane services is a problem. We should all expect, rather demand, better service from the public servants who are paid for by the tax payers. Refusing to understand that there is problem, asking for tolerance of inefficiencies, making excuses for the status quo, coloring the intentions of the messenger are only detrimental to improving the situation.

The insensitivity of the Indian bureaucracy

Yesterday, my mother had to go to the local passport office to have her passport renewed. She has had her current passport for 10 years and now needs a new passport to travel. I looked up the web site of the passport office, entered all her data to register for the visit and printed out application neatly. The prep went for a week to collect the supporting documents such as the voter's card, photos, copies of old passport, etc. My wife and kids accompanied her when the day came a little ahead of the appointment time at 9:30 AM.

There was a long line of people, a closed door with a rogue gate keeper peeking out to open the door for the appointment holders. This guy has no training whatsoever. He strictly insisted that only the applicant can go in. My wife tried to explain that my mom needs help with the application process and cannot handle it herself, only to fall in deaf ears. Once inside, my mother was made to wait in a queue, promptly ambushed by the impatient staff at the passport office and sent out after a couple of hours. Their reason was that she needed to show in the application the US address where she stayed a few months in the last year. Not only that they want address proof of that US address! How insane is that? My mom had no clue of what they were asking. There was no explanation or any courteous to a senior citizen. She had to leave the office in anguish after two hours of waiting in the madness of the passport office. My wife meanwhile argues with the gate keeper and finally makes her way in when mom was fed up and coming out. My wife goes in and finds out what they want. But because we filed the application online, there is no way to edit the application! There are "paid volunteers" inside the passport office sitting with a bunch of computers to register the application online right there. However, they cannot edit an existing application, because the website does not support it. So this will be a completely new registration. All that I did for a week is now thrown out and the guy takes the money to register a new application. Of course, there is a queue at every stage and long waiting in grueling hot sun. Most people don't even know that there is a wait counter where you have to take a ticket for your turn. People stand in the queue only to find out that they don't have a ticket when they are in the counter and promptly sent to the back of the line.

Meanwhile my kids are outside with the auto guy in the heat of the mid day. During the wait, my mom comes out and after another fight with the gate keeper gets the kids inside. You can see how duty bound the gate keeper is in his work not allowing a 6 yr old and a 3 yr old inside the passport office when their mom and grandma are inside. Anyway the ordeal comes to climax when they approach the counter to "file" the application, only to be told that their registration takes an hour to update before they can pay the fee. The time is now 1:30 PM; kids go bonkers in the heat and the hunger. Meanwhile a lot more applicants are kicked out the same way as my mom was without proper explanation, guidance or courtesy. Those who can afford go through the "volunteers" to get the job done. Others are clueless and wander talking to anyone who can point them in a direction. It is complete chaos. My wife decides at this time there is no point in waiting for the 'system to update' and decides to leave home. They all come home, have late lunch, get the kids to nap and go back around 3:00 PM. Apparently it was much better at that time after most of those poor applicants were rejected and sent home to continue with their ordeal for another day. My mom was able to pay the fee and get out of their. Will the passport come in the next month? Hope so. There is "police verification" even for renewals. So that could be interesting.

Genius Vs Team

No organization can depend on genius; the supply is always scarce and unreliable. It is the test of an organization to make ordinary human beings perform better than they seem capable of, to bring out whatever strength there is in its members, and to use each man's strength to help all the others perform. The purpose of an organization is to enable common men to do uncommon things.
- Peter Drucker

Globalization Vs. Socialism - Part2

True, the first few instances of a state attempting to implement socialism ended up in disasters. Yeah I am talking about the erstwhile U.S.S.R and the "Rather Something republic of China". They both set off to implement the "dictatorship of the proletariat" but were only partially successful - they could only implement upto the "dictatorship" part! But elsewhere when implemented within the confines of a democratic system, with the state continuously tweaking it's socialist principles based on realities of the day, it did pay off. In India, the state owned railways system, subsidized for the poor, ran at loss for several decades, the loss compensated by tax money from people who could pay taxes. In general state owned public transportation system helped poor Indians a lot (by taxing rich Indians). Another good example would be the ban on exports of essential commodities, that the GOI enforces once in a while. This is about Govt. protecting poor people from unfair market dynamics. When the supply of essential commodities doesn't meet the combined demands of internal/external markets, there will be a tendency among suppliers to court external markets. This is when external markets are willing to pay a premium to get those commodities while poor locals can't compete with them. After all the essential commodities like rice and lentil weren't produced just by man-hours put in by farmers. They also used up some of nation's resources such as water and soil, all of which belong to the citizens. So it makes sense to give poor Indians the first chance to buy these essential commodities.

But imagine a hypothetical scenario where farmers in Vietnam are able to produce better qualitily rice and wheat, in higher quantities and export it to India at a price cheaper than the local suppliers can give at. If GOI moves to block this import then the local buyers are going to suffer due to higher prices. Furthermore the skills of local farmers won't grow, thanks to the absence of competition. This is certainly not good. A country should allow it's people to compete with other people in skills though it protects it's people from unfair trade conditions. In other words a country should distinguish between a fair compertition (of skills) and an unfair competition (of prices) while applying socialism. I am going to save the rest of my babble for Part3.

Funny bit

Truth is seldom kind

Jaswant’s incomplete truth

...The British had decided on Partition to serve their own strategic ends. On 29 March, 1945, after Viceroy Lord Wavell met Prime Minister Churchill in London he recorded: “He (Churchill) seems to favour partition of India into Pakistan, Hindustan and Princestan.” ...

...Jinnah’s key decisions between 1940 and 1946, including the demand for Pakistan in 1940, were taken after getting the nod from Churchill or Lord Linlithgow and Wavell, both Churchill’s admirers...

...Pandit Nehru was...thoroughly programmed by the British since his school days. His proximity to Lord Mountbatten has been recorded by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and historian Shashi Joshi among others...

Excerpts from the editorial of The Statesman.

Power of thought!

Circle of no life!

Do you have adversaries?

To govern is to choose,
To choose is to offend
To offend is to make adversaries.

Rethinking computing technology

Artificial brain in 10 years?

Cult Math

Here is an interesting math that I came across recently on one of the blogs. There are many religious, "scientific" gurus, yogics and cult leaders mostly from India and some from other parts of the world. The basic instrument they all use to spread and capture their audience is the same. The following algebra explains that.

If X = Those who have not tried the cult,
And Y = Those who have tried cult and BUY it,
And Z = Those who have tried cult and DON'T BUY it,
And Q = (Y+Z)*#yrs practiced = Those who tried the cult, bought it, practiced it for years, became dis-illusioned and dispensed of it....

According to those in the Y group
Y > X ( cult-ies are better than X and must find and SAVE them)
Y > Z ( cult-ies are better and more enlightened than Z)
Y > Q ( cult-ies that stay the course and not question the cult are more advanced than ex-cult-ies)

Therefore:
Y = Know it all - pseudo-enlightened
X = Ignorant
Z = Ego with wall around them
Q = X*Z (Ego times ignorance)

Y will always win the argument, will win the most toys and achieve the highest bliss. Everyone else is X, Z or Q.

And that is the definition of being brain washed!