New Delhi, Nov 18: With the entire business community talking about quality,it is but natural that the government cannot be spared: The CII conducted aspecial plenary session on ``Quality in Government'' at the 7th QualitySummit on Thursday. The speakers included Central Vigilance Commissioner NVittal and Union Minister for Urban Development Jagmohan, amongst a host ofother speakers like CII president Rahul Bajaj and Secretary, ministry ofpersonnel, public grievances and pensions BB Tandon.Jagmohan emphasised the fact that quality in government can be brought aboutthrough courage, conviction and commitment in people. He said: ``In ascenario where there are people doing both positive and negative things, thechallenge is doing a balancing act. And that is the crux of Indianadministration and government.'' He called for an attitudinal change in thecountry. ``Unless we come out of our selfish attitudes and evolve aninspired ideology of work, there can be no quality,'' he added.
Vittal, in his typical humourous manner, began with the basics: what isquality and why do we need it. ``Who is the government? It is we who makethe government. So we need to bring in quality amongst ourselves,'' hesaid.
He said:``The concept of quality to government is a recent phenomenon inIndia, with the government moving towards an era of economicliberalisation". As a start, he said "Define the objectives of governmentorganisations and who the customers are. Define the service parameters interms of expectations of service to be provided by governmentorganisations." To improve the effectiveness of these he suggested a fewpoints:
Use the questionnaire method -- Send questionnaires to people in thedepartment to identify problems.
Look at the systems and procedures which are time-consuming and ruleswhich have become outdated. Remove them to increase the velocity of businessin government.
Bring out creativity in people by asking for suggestions.
Have constant brainstorming or business process re-engineering studiesto generate work ideas.
Bring in greater transparency and empower people within theorganisation.
Punish people with a negative attitude effectively.While the other speakers talked about what should be done to bring qualityin government, BB Tandon highlighted what the government was already doingfor the same. He said: ``Quality in government is all about responsivenessto people's needs, accountability, transparency, efficiency of acorruption-free administration. This requires a complete reform in thegovernment which has been introduced through the Citizens' Charters and isalso highlighted in the National Democratic Assembly's electionmanifesto.''
He went on to say that though India has been rated as one of the mostcorrupt countries, the Central government has from time to time takeninitiatives to check corruption in high places and strengthen the vigilancemachinery. The importance of TQM in government can be seen by the continuousefforts since 1996 when 11 states and state-level training institutes wereselected to participate in TQM.
To bring about changes in the government, the Lok Pal Bill, to checkcorruption, has already been drafted and the government is considering theCode of Ethics which will be added to the Civil Services Conduct Rules. Toensure transparency, accountability and effective operations, a Freedom ofInformation Bill has been prepared, which will be introduced shortly, hesaid. And like the CII president Rahul Bajaj pointed out, an honestgovernment with efficient systems and transparency in decision-making is allthat is needed for having a quality government.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.