THE RATIONALE FOR CITIZENS’ SERVICE
DELIVERY CHARTERS: Kenyan Experience
Juster Nkoroi
Performance Contracting Department
Nairobi Kenya
Importance of Citizens’ Service Delivery
Charters
 Empowers citizens to hold institutions and individual
officers accountable for quality, timely and responsive
services- value addition to taxes
 Reduces corruption
 Changes culture and attitude at work place by
focusing efforts to customer satisfaction
 Ensures public officers are conscious about quality of
services offered
 Enables systems to continuously re-engineer service
processes
Objective of the Presentation
Share experience on importance of
Service Charters.
WHAT IS IT?
 The Citizens’ Charter is a brief public document that
provides the essential information that citizen and
stakeholders need to know about the services or functions
of a public agency/department of the government
 the manner in which they can assess the services
efficiently.
The underlying principle is that when people are empowered
with such information they will be able to hold the State
and its agencies accountable.
PURPOSE OF THE CHARTER
 The purpose of the service charters is to continually
improve the quality of public services for the people and
other consumers of public services in Kenya.
 The Citizens’ Charter sees public services through the eyes
of those who use them.
 The Citizens’ Charter is meant to raise quality, secure
better value and extend accountability.
 Thus, the basic thrust of Citizens’ Charter is to bring the
citizen to the fore and see public services from service
users’ angle.
RATIONALE
 The rationale of Citizens’ Charter emanates from the
necessity of ensuring accountability of the providers of
public services to the service users. Its justification is
based on the following factors;
RATIONALE…

On the recognition of the fact that all public services are
paid for by the citizens, either directly or indirectly.

Therefore, they are entitled to quality and standard
services.

The citizens must be able to secure better value for their
money.

make services more responsive and the service
providers more accountable to the service users.
Basic components of Citizens’ Charter
1.Details of Business Transacted by the Service Provider

In its Citizens’ Charter, the organization must state
clearly what subjects it deals with and service areas it
broadly covers.

This helps the users to decide what type of services they
can expect form a particular service provider.

On the other hand, a Charter must be realistic to
incorporate commitments, which are achievable.
2. Expectations from the Users/ Clients

The services in the charter should be the most
frequently sought or demanded

On the other hand, there are certain obligations
on the part of the service users, which help in
providing better services.

Expectations of the service users must be
genuine and according to the list of services
enunciated in the Charter.
3.Citizens’ Rights and Responsibilities
 A charter must clearly define what are the rights and
responsibilities of the citizens in regard to a particular
service.
 The citizens or service users are also responsible to
furnish information, which are essential for delivery of
public services.
4. Agreed and Published Standards for Service
Delivery
 The Citizens’ Charter must set explicit standards of service
so that the users are aware of the quality or standard of
service they can reasonably expect form each service.
 It must contain provisions for effective monitoring and
publication of actual performance against the set
standards. Service standards must conform to the following
5 essential requirements:
 TRAMS
 Time bound
 Relevant
 Accurate
 Measurable
 Specific
6. Openness and Information
 The objectives of Citizens’ Charter will be fulfilled only if the
organization reaches out to all of its service users.
 The service users must be provided with comprehensive
information at the right time and at the right place.
 Full and accurate information published in a simple
language must be readily available to the stakeholders.
Openness…
 Regular publication of handouts, posters,
newsletters, updated information on website and
information
through
popular
modes
of
communication can be used to reach out to the
target user groups.
 The organization must be open to queries and tell
the citizens about the goals as well as the means it
would like to adopt to achieve those goals.
7. Courtesy and Helpfulness
 The organization should imbibe a culture of
providing courteous and helpful services to the
service users and the charter must imbed it.
 It must form part of behavior of the public service
providers.
 The public service providers must be helpful and
courteous towards the citizens while providing
services.
Courtesy…
 Courtesy and helpfulness must be guided by the
fact that it the service users or the citizens for
which the Organization and the service providers
exist and not the vise versa.
 Thus, personnel involved in delivering public
services must be courteous and helpful to the best
possible extent, which is enumerated in the
following tabular form;
Courtesy…
To be courteous
 Receive the citizen/service
user who visits Govt. office
with a smile and request
him to take a seat.
 Assure him of help from
the organization
 Apologize for delay in
service delivery.
 Say ‘sorry’ if unable to
help.
 Express thanks for visiting
and
cooperating
for
providing better services.





To be Helpful
Know his problem/cause of
visit and give advice on what
is needed.
Provide relevant information
and do what is really needed.
Explain the causes of delay
and sincerely try to solve his
problem.
Refer the citizen to a person
in the organization who can
help him.
If work is not done during the
visit, communicate him soon
after it is accomplished.
8. Value for Public Money
 It is yet another important component of Citizens’
Charter.
 It implies efficiency and economy in delivering
public service within the limit of the available
resources.
 The users must get satisfaction in terms of service
standard and value for their money
9. Complaints handling and Grievance Redress





There has to be published and easy to use complaint
mechanism available to the service users at a nearest
possible point.
A service user must not run from pillar to post to lodge a
complaint or for redress of his grievances.
There must be reasonable time limits set for each stage
of the complaint processing and its outcome.
Detailed information about a complaint should include
its type/nature, complainant's name, location and date,
responsible officer, and referrals.
Genuine complaints must be seen as a means of getting
feedback, which can be used to improve services in
several ways:
Complaints…
 It will reduce the causes of complaint in future.
 It will help the service provider to understand
clearly when and where it is failing.
 The information generated by complaints will
assist the service provider to put matters right.
 A trend analysis of complaints will help the
organization to resolve systemic and recurring
problems.
Complaints…
 There is little point in complaint handling unless
appropriate grievance redress is affected.
 A major reason why most service users do not complain is
their apprehension whether it would make any difference.
 There must be an effective grievance redress mechanism
and detailed information about how to access it.
 Effective grievance redress would require fixing of
responsibility in cases, where commitments have not been
fulfilled. The nature and form of redress would depend on
the nature of complaint:
Complaints…
 For small mistakes, which can be rectified
immediately, an apology may be all that is needed.
 If quick remedy is possible, things must be
corrected without delay.
 In matters of blatant violation of the declared
commitment and loss to the service user,
compensation should be appropriate
10. Accessibility of Accountable Officials
 Complaints by the service users should be considered as
opportunities to improve services.
 Therefore,
courteously.
complaints
should
be
always
treated
 There should be an easy to access and user-friendly
complaint mechanism.
 A Charter must contain names, postal and e-mail addresses
and telephone numbers of the Officer as well as all other
personnel involved in delivery of services at different levels.
11. Putting Things Right
 If things go wrong, the service provider should try to
put them right, in terms of a quick and effective
remedy.
 This is the hallmark of citizens’ charter.
12. Responsiveness and Commitment

Highly motivated and trained frontline staff
should be given the responsibility to deal with
users’ grievances.

They should be empowered to redress
grievances at the first contact.

Commitment for quick and appropriate redress
of grievances is required at each level of the
Organization for the following purpose;
Complaints…
 There is a need to set up an Integrated Performance
Monitoring System in the Organization. It is to be ensured
that all complaints and inquiries are logged.
 The data acquired can be then analyzed to ascertain
whether or not the Organization is able to meet its
published standards.
 This would require measurable targets to be set for
objective assessment of performance, which must be
reviewed on a regular basis.
Complaints…

The service delivery system should be subject to
regular review to ensure that it is delivering the
desired outcomes.

Feedback on performance could be acquired
from a trend analysis of recorded complainants.

The concerned officer must furnish regular
reports to the Core Group on performance of
service standards.
Complaints…
 A comparative analysis of nature, type and volume
of complaints with the published standards of
performance can help in assessing actual
performance of the Organization.
 Public reporting of the outcomes of performance
monitoring will further enhance the credibility of
the service provider.
CONDITIONS FOR SUCCESS
 Remember formulating a Citizens’ Charter is just the
beginning of a journey to arrive at the goal!
i. Creating Motivation
 Motivate the service delivery personnel or officials to
sincerely implement the mandates of the Charter.
ii. Creating Awareness
 Create awareness among the citizens about the benefits of
the Charter.
Conditions…
iii. Win Confidence
 Win citizens’ confidence by doing, not merely by
saying.
iv. Efficient Service Delivery
 Establish an efficient service delivery system.
v. Effective Grievance Redress
 Establish an effective grievance redress system.
Conditions…
vi. Efficient Feedback
 Establish an efficient feedback mechanism and
feedback loop.
vii. Monitoring
 Conduct regular review and monitoring of its
implementation.
viii. Independent audit and evaluation
 Independent audit an evaluation of
implementation of the Citizens’ Charter is
essential for its success.
Thank you for your attention