The functions of government fall into two broad heads: legal exercise of authority and provision of services. Modern states are welfare states and provide a wide range of public services to their citizens. The services cover areas such as education, health, housing and transport. Services also include such requirements as a driving license, telephone connection, gas connection, tax refund, Aadhaar card, passport, and extracts from public records of one’s property, educational qualification and date of birth. Citizens often experience considerable difficulty in securing timely, reliable and quality services from government agencies. Citizen Charters are a means of solving the day to day problems which citizens experience while dealing with organisations providing public services.
The Conservative party government under John Major was the first to introduce the citizen’s charter (1991). Citizen’s Charters seek to continuously improve the quality of public services for the people so as to respond to their needs and wishes. Tony Blair’s Labour government relaunched Citizen’s Charters in 1998 under the name “Services First”.
The six principles of the Citizen’s Charter movement as originally framed were:
(i) Quality: Improving the quality of services;
(ii) Choice: provision wherever possible;
(iii) Standards: Specifying what to expect and how to act if standards are not met;
(iv) Value: For the taxpayers’ money;
(v) Accountability: Of Individuals and Organisations; and
(vi) Transparency: Of Rules/Procedures/Schemes/Grievances.
The Labour Government later expanded them into the following nine principles of Service Delivery:
(i) Set standards of service;
(ii) Be open and provide full information;
(iii) Consult and involve;
(iv) Encourage access and promote choice;
(v) Treat allfairly;
(vi) Put things right when they go wrong;
(vii) Use resources effectively;
(viii) Innovate and improve;
(ix) Work with other service providers.
The UK’s Citizen’s Charter initiative was followed by similar programmes in other countries like Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, India, Jamaica, Malaysia, Portugal, and Spain. Some of these adopted the service quality model of the “Total Quality Management” (TQM) movement. For improving public services, some countries used methods such as the Business Excellence Model, Charter Mark and ISO 9000.