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PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 53: Citizen's charter Consumer rights for public-services users The problem: unaccountable public services The Citizen's Charter is a way of making public services accountable. The idea arose in the United Kingdom from a simple question: if the public service which people have paid for through taxation is no good, why should they not get their money back, as they would have the right to with any shop or service provider in the private sector? The idea: consumer rights for taxpayers When people buy goods and services from the private sector, they expect to be compensated if they receive poor quality. Private firms routinely offer exchanges or refunds because this is a good way to keep customer loyalty. The public sector, by contrast, has no need to secure the goodwill of its customers. It takes their cash through taxation, and has no need to make its products attractive. The result is that the public services tend to be producer-oriented, and to treat their customers with indifference. Governments have stressed citizen's rights, pointing out that voters can influence the public services by the way they vote at elections, and perhaps through representative institutions. These rights are meaningless in practice, since they are interwoven with so many other decisions which are made at election time. The Citizen's Charter seeks to add consumer rights to those citizen's rights, equipping users with the means of seeking personal redress if the service they receive is inadequate. Example: empowering citizens When the Citizen's Charter was instituted in Britain in 1991, each part of the public services had to set out what they were trying to deliver. They had to say what they thought the taxpayers were entitled to receive for their money. It involved a revolution in thinking, because public services had thought of citizens as clients, rather than as customers. In most cases no-one had ever given any thought at all as to the quality of output which could be deemed acceptable, or to improving it. The idea that state services would be measured and expected to deliver was a new one. Officials at the Department for Education, for example, were completely thrown by the notion that parents who paid for state education through their taxes were somehow entitled to expect their children to be taught to read and write. Each service was asked to institute means of redress when it fell short of its promised output levels. It was decided that the services themselves should set their targets, that they should 'own' their charters, rather than have them imposed from outside. The intention was to raise morale and have them take a pride in delivering high quality public services. The rule was that if these targets were not met, there would be some demand for an explanation or, if the shortcoming were serious enough, some form of penalty. Customer redress could take different forms. It might be an apology and an explanation in some cases; it might be a refund voucher in others. Thus, if one of the state railway system's trains were temporarily delayed on its journey, the driver would be expected to make an announcement saying why (another novel concept in the state-run railway sector). If the train arrived significantly late, passengers would be entitled to a portion of their fare back. If trains were late every day, season-ticket holders would be entitled to a refund. The reason did not matter: the aim was to make public service providers conscious of the needs of their customers, and liable if they did not meet those needs. So they had an incentive to track down and eliminate the cause of the problem, whatever it might be. In order to foster the spirit of improvement, a number of Charter Marks were awarded each year, where public services had achieved excellence in six designated areas of attainment, including value for money, systematic improvement, and full transparency. There was intense competition for the coveted Charter Marks, and public servants had the opportunity to emulate good practices which they saw being done elsewhere. Recently, the scheme has grown, and hundreds of Charter Marks are awarded each year. They can go to organizational units as diverse as schools, Benefit Agency offices catering departments in hospitals or prisons and local emergency services. Other initiatives include 'league tables' of performance for schools, hospitals and other institutions, allowing users to check the quality of the service they receive - the average waiting times for National Health Service operations, for example, or the examination pass rates in different state schools. This technique allows government to focus on raising standards in those institutions that are clearly failing to deliver. A further quality-raising initiative is the Beacon scheme, where a handful of state organizations are singled out for particular praise as examples to other public bodies. The scheme aims to exchange good practice and innovation between them and other bodies, and the chosen Beacon organizations are expected to help teach others how to achieve their own high standards. Assessment: charting success Over the course of a year, each public service produced its charter, and the public saw for the first time just what it was that they were entitled to, and what to do if they failed to receive it. The effect was to raise the quality of the public services. More than that, it gave citizens the sense that these services were paid for by them, and were their servants, not their masters. It led people to treat public services as suppliers, and to compare their output with that of the private sector. It changed, in a subtle way, the relationship between the individual and the government. To succeed, however, a Citizen's Charter initiative needs strong drive from the centre. "It is all too easy for the idea to be absorbed and neutered by the civil service," according to Dr Madsen Pirie, intellecual pioneer of the idea and a founding member of the official government panel set up to implement it. "There should be a clear aim of setting firm and stretching (but achievable) targets, measuring performance against them, and providing the public with practical redress if they are not met," says Pirie. "The trick is to ensure that the system does not dissolve into a set of vague objectives couched in the language of management-speak, which helps nobody." For further information
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Copyright 2002: Adam Smith Institute
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