Making democracy and good governance work: The Citizen Report Card on public services

Saturday, 7 March 2015 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Noting theGovernment’s commitment to its mandate to bring about good governance, Minister of Public Administration, Democratic Governance and Buddha Sasana Karu Jayasuriya said that changing an entrenched political system takes time.

He made these remarks at a 24 February event organised by the Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA),focusing on the Citizen Report Card on public education services in the Mullaitivu and Vavuniya Districts. A simple but highly effective tool to share people’s feedback about public services with administrators, the Citizen Report Card mechanism puts good governance into practice. Titled ‘Co-Creating Good Governance,’ the event emphasised that people have a necessary, constructive role to play in helping the state to fulfil its obligations to them. CEPA, in collaboration with the Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (ACTED), pioneered the Citizen Report Card method in Sri Lanka last year. In a process with major public ownership and investment, community groups in Mullaitivu and Vavuniya identified education as their highest priority to communicate their concerns with the State and, after training in the method, carried out the assessment themselves. The Public Affairs Centre, Bangalore, provided technical expertise for the project, which was co-funded by the European Union and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. Dr. GopakumarThampi, Director of Economic Governance, Asia Foundation, explained that the Citizen Report Card is most effective when it focuses on improving services and institutions, rather than targeting individual bureaucrats. Highlighting international examples, he said that success depends on thoughtfully adapting the method to the political economyof the local context, as well as crafting the resulting advocacy messages. NadarajahTheivendrarajah(Assistant Secretary, Provincial Ministry of Education, Northern Province), G.N. Aathavan (Deputy Director of Education from the Mullaitivu Zonal Office) and I. K. Thavaratnam (Deputy Director of Education from the Vavuniya South Zonal Education Office) enriched the discussion by sharing theirexperiences of working in the region. ShiralLakthilleke (Attorney-at-Law and Coordinating Secretary to the President), Dr. VinyaAriyaratne (General Secretary, Sarvodaya) and UnaMcCawley (UNICEF Representative for Sri Lanka) were panellists in a discussion, which located the Citizen Report Card exercise within a broader human rights framework, moving on to how the method could be sustainably embedded in government processes. Prof.SavithriGunasekera chaired the discussion.