Improving Public Service Delivery (PH0036)

Status quo - Government agencies do not follow or have poor service commitments to the public. One-way government frontline service approach which does not consider customer insight. Main objective - The Integrated Anti-Red Tape Act (ARTA) Program’s main objective is to improve public service delivery by making government agencies responsive to their customers’ insights. The program also aims to increase transparency, citizen participation, and accountability. By doing so, the Integrated ARTA Program responds to the societal goal, Inclusive Growth and Poverty Reduction.
Performance Target by 2017:
 90% of public reports lodged via Contact Center ng Bayan
(CCB), acted upon by CSC
 10% increase in the percentage of offices surveyed under
the Report Card Survey (RCS) obtaining the Citizen’s Satisfaction Center Seal of Excellence Award (CSC-SEA) (2015 baseline). Relevance - The program promotes transparency and access to information by making sure that frontline government agencies post Citizens Charters informing clients and stakeholders of their service commitments.
The program also capitalizes on technology to advance civic participation with the Contact Center ng Bayan which created a national public feedback system. Through multiple access modes, a quick action team from the Civil Service Commission collects and responds to public – customer complaints, suggestions, and
other feedback, and link these to agencies concerned.
Likewise, the program furthers public accountability, access to information, and civic participation through the Report Card Survey. The initiative transforms the feedback process through the active collection of clients’ insights on agencies’ compliance with ARTA and on the quality of service they just received. It introduces a metric-based approach that enables government agencies and the public to easily and objectively track the progress of public service performance. Above all, the RCS grants citizens the power to quantitatively evaluate the performance of government offices, and to an extent, determine if and how much performance incentive a government office gets. Ambition - As the program empowers both the public and government agencies, an espousal of a culture of customer service and continuous public service improvement is envisioned. With the program, government agencies will hopefully open up and view the public clients as their partners, and public feedback as constructive and valuable inputs for genuine public service delivery enhancement.

For Commitment details, see https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/philippines-mid-term-progress-report-2015-2017.

8. Feedback mechanism to improve public delivery

Commitment Text:

· Government agencies do not follow or have poor service commitments to the public.

· One-way government frontline service approach which does not consider customer insight.

Main objective - The Integrated Anti-Red Tape Act (ARTA) Program’s main objective is to improve public service delivery by making government agencies responsive to their customers’ insights. The program also aims to increase transparency, citizen participation, and accountability. By doing so, the Integrated ARTA Program responds to the societal goal, Inclusive Growth and Poverty Reduction. Performance Target by 2017:

· 90% of public reports lodged via Contact Center ng Bayan (CCB), acted upon by CSC

· 10% increase in the percentage of offices surveyed under the Report Card Survey (RCS) obtaining the Citizen’s Satisfaction Center Seal of Excellence Award (CSC-SEA) (2015 baseline).

Ambition - As the program empowers both the public and government agencies, an espousal of a culture of customer service and continuous public service improvement is envisioned. With the program, government agencies will hopefully open up and view the public clients as their partners, and public feedback as constructive and valuable inputs for genuine public service delivery enhancement.

Responsible institution: Civil Service Commission

Supporting institutions: Department of Science and Technology-Information and Communications Technology Office. Bantay.PH, United Nations Development Programme, Integrity for Investments Initiative (i3)/USAID

Start date: 2015

End date: 2017

Commitment Aim

This commitment aimed to improve public service delivery through an effective government feedback and monitoring mechanism, particularly the Integrated Anti-Red Tape Act (ARTA) Program of the Civil Service Commission (CSC). The Contact Center ng Bayan is a national public feedback system that can be contacted via SMS, phone, and email, and responds to feedback. The commitment set targets for the percentage of reports generated through Contact Center ng Bayan that must have been acted upon (80 percent and 85 percent for 2015 and 2016, respectively). The commitment also aimed to increase the number of offices that receive the Citizens’ Satisfaction Center-Seal of Excellence Award (CSC-SEA), from 2015 baseline.[Note: See the Progress Report for more details. Aceron, Joy. 2017. Philippines Progress Report, 2015-2017. Open Government Partnership Independent Reporting Mechanism. ]

Status

Midterm: Substantial

The progress report marked this commitment’s level of completion as “substantial.” 100 percent of the complaints lodged via CNC were acted upon in 2015 and 2016.[Note: Ibid. ] The feedback was forwarded to concerned agencies for action. CNC reported that 87 percent of complaints had been resolved by the end of December 2015, while the remainder were to be resolved in January 2016.[Note: Civil Service Commission. CCB 2015 Terminal Report. Unpublished document. ]

The completion level of the commitment on Seal of Excellence Awards recipients was limited because the 2016 Report Card Survey was still ongoing at the time of writing the progress report. CSC expected that the number of agencies awarded the Seal would go down because of changes to the criteria. In the past, the presence of strike out questions, which are questions on standards that are either present or absent, were graded. These were changed to possibly automatically disqualify certain offices, making it harder to qualify for the seal.[Note: Ibid.]

End of term: Complete

All the deliverables for this commitment have now been completed. The number of recipients of CSC-Seal of Excellence Award has increased by 16 percent.[Note: Civil Service Commission, response to the questionnaire of the IRM Researcher for the End of Term Report. Sent on October 9, 2017.] Nine more agencies were awarded the Seal in 2016, in addition to the 55 recipients in 2015.[Note: Ibid.]

Did It Open Government?

Public Accountability: Major

Civic Participation: Minor

Government agencies have a history of poor service delivery and have not used customer feedback to improve performance in the past. The commitment has demonstrated the effectiveness using incentive (awards) and feedback to improve the delivery of front-line services. XX[Note: G-Watch/ PODER-Ateneo School of Government (2015). Monitoring and Assessment of the Anti-Red Tape Act (ARTA) Report Card Survey. Ateneo School of Government. Unpublished report.]XX This is evidenced by the increasing number of agencies improving their performance in the ARTA-Report Card Survey and the increase in the number of recipients of the Seal. The increasing number of frontline agencies with improved performance[Note: CSC, Integrated Anti-Red Tape Program, Accessed on Nov. 12, 2016, http://www.gov.ph/governance/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Q1-Q2-2015-ANTI-RED-TAPE.pdf. ] indicates a growing awareness of the need for frontline services to improve and be citizen-oriented. As reported by CSC: “because of the results of the RCS and feedback through the Contact Center ng Bayan, many government offices have initiated concrete improvements. Among these are the HDMF’s ‘One Look Service Offices’, SSS’ ARTA Corner, GSIS’ internal survey on client satisfaction, and PhilHealth’s Queuing System in all its branches in NCR wherein the response time/performance of frontliners could also be checked.”[Note: Civil Service Commission, response to the questionnaire of the IRM Researcher for the End of Term Report. Sent on October 9, 2017.] However, there are a number of frontline agencies whose performance are yet to improve despite being subjected to ARTA-RCS and there are critical agencies (e.g. Bureau of Customs) that have yet to be covered by ARTA-RCS.

There is also room to improve the citizen participation component. Though Contact Center ng Bayan provides a space for citizens to give feedback, the use of the platforms and mechanisms by citizens could be improved, including the feedback mechanisms available at the frontline services, to make government responsive and accountable and avoid inefficiency and corruption.

Carried Forward?

This commitment has not been carried forward into the next action plan. Executive Order six (passed on 14 October 2016) established a new feedback mechanism called 8888 Citizens’ Complaint Hotline. This new mechanism has been included in the next PH-OGP action plan.