Citizen feedback

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Punjab has done something that is now being copied by Romania and Albania. In Punjab it all began in 2008 when Zubair Bhatti, the DCO Jhang, began calling citizens on their cell phones to ascertain the quality of service they had received from government offices.

CM Shahbaz Sharif pulled out the ‘Jhang Model’ and transformed it into a comprehensive social audit system. The Citizen Feedback Model (CFM) now spans all districts in the province of Punjab and covers government hospitals, education, the Lahore Development Authority (LDA), the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA), police, rescue, the food department and revenue.

This is how the CFM works: The “process starts from the moment a citizen goes to a government office to avail a service (e.g. driving license, character certificate, property registration, etc.). Mobile numbers of citizens who avail these services are recorded and then recorded telephone messages in the voice of the chief minister are broadcast to these mobile numbers. The telephone messages are followed by SMS to solicit feedback from citizens. Call-centre agents then contact random citizens to gather more information.” Here’s a typical SMS: “Dear citizen, did you experience any corruption when obtaining your driving licence yesterday in Lahore?”

As of November 2014, the CFM has conducted a total of 7.3 million transactions whereby six million residents of Punjab were contacted. CM Shahbaz Sharif, and his team, uses the collected feedback from citizens to monitor government service delivery and tackle petty corruption. The CFM generates monthly reports and Shahbaz Sharif has a history of taking strict actions in response to negative citizen feedback from a particular district. Currently, the CFM is sending out more than 12,000 text messages every day to check on the Punjab government’s service delivery.

The CFM has a communication component (where a citizen communicates with the government), a deterrence element plus punitive action. The CFM is a low cost tool with little capital outlay and low operating costs. The CFM is about calling the citizen to empower their government. The CFM is about closing the feedback loop. The CFM is about calling in against corruption and the CFM is about enhancing service delivery through technology.

In 2014, the Punjab government’s CFM won the first prize at the Global Innovation Competition held in Kenya (the three-day event had attracted 196 entries from all over the world). Professor Dan Hough, director of the Sussex Centre for the Study of Corruption at the University of Sussex, wrote in the South China Morning Post, “To fight corruption, Beijing should look to Pakistan… and that the citizens should be empowered so that they could report bribery……”

In 2014, PM Nawaz Sharif ordered the implementation of the Punjab Citizen Feedback in Nadra, IESCO, Capital Police, Railways, PIA and other federal agencies to improve service delivery and to enhance communication with ordinary citizens. On the ground, nothing much has happened in Islamabad so far.

But, according to The Washington Post, PM Sharif, under the influence of his 42-year old daughter, is busy unblocking access to YouTube, pushing to end child marriage and enacting a landmark domestic violence bill….”

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society– MarkTwain

The writer is a columnist based in Islamabad.

Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com

Twitter: @saleemfarrukh