Extending operations management framework to public system: public grievance redressal system in urban local bodies in Karnataka, India

Abstract

The decision making process in government is nothing but workflow management. A critical aspect of public service delivery is the grievance redressal management system. In terms of complexity, complaints management process in services sector, especially in the government system ranks the highest.On any indicator of services management like uncertainty, scale, variability, etc. complaints management in government ranks high.Besides, it involves significant involvement of clientele, in this case often the poor and illiterate. It will be interesting to study the influence of such complexities on the management of this part of the operational cycle. It was decided to study the grievances redressal system of the government of Karnataka, a state in India, to understand the complexity of this aspect of the operations management. Implementation of e-governance reform is one of the mandatory reformsundertaken by urban local bodies (ULBs) as part of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), a national programme of the government of India. The services to be covered under the e-governance reform include the following: basic citizen services (such as birth and death registration and health programs), revenue earning services (such as property tax and licenses), development services (including water supply and other utilities, building plan approval), efficiency improvement services (such as procurement and monitoring of projects), back improvements (such as accounting and personnel management system) and monitoring (including citizen grievance redressal) (Government of India, 2011). In Karnataka, the Municipal Reforms Cell (MRC) of the Directorate ofMunicipal Administration (DMA) was set up in 2005 with the primary objective of undertaking implementation of computerisation and other reforms.The MRC initiated the e-governance reforms in 213 ULBs of Karnataka (other than Bangalore, a state capital).The reforms were implemented in select 49 ULBs of Karnataka under the Asian Development Bank-funded project titled,‘Nirmala Nagar Project’ and in the remaining 164 ULBs under theWorld Bank-funded project titled, ‘Karnataka Municipal Reforms Project’. E-governance applications concerning the following were introduced by the MRC: birth and death registration and certification, fundbased double entry accrual accounting system (FBAS), public grievance redressal(PGR), websites for ULBs, GIS-based property tax information, monthly information booklet, service level benchmarking (SLB) among others. This study aims at assessing the performance of the e-governance applicationconcerning the Public Grievance Redressal (PGR) System installed in these ULBs. The key areas of study of the PGR include the following: (i) performance of the egovernance application in terms of responsiveness to grievances; (ii) challenges faced during implementation; and (iii) the system gaps that continue to persist.