FCI KERALA REGION IN TUNE WITH CITIZENS CHARTER.

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Dr. C.T.Sunilkumar
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May 1997 was the turning point in the concept of citizen’s service in India. Significant progress in economic development and literacy rate has made Indian citizens increasingly aware of their rights. Citizens have become more articulated and except the administration not merely to respond to their demands but also to anticipate them. It was in this climate that a consensus began to evolve, since 1996, in the government on effective and responsive administration. At a Conference of Chief minister of various states and union territories held 24 May, 1997 in New Delhi, presided over by prime minister of India, an “Action plan for Effective and Responsive Government” at the centre and State levels was adopted. One of the major decisions at that Conference was that the Central and State Government would formulate Citizen’s Charter, starting with those sectors that have a large public interface( e.g. Railways, Telecom, Posts, Public Distribution System and the like). These Charters were to include first, standard of service as well as the time limit that the public can reasonably except for service delivery, avenues of grievance redressal and a provision for independent scrutiny through the involvement of citizen and consumer groups.

The Department of Administration Reforms and Public Grievances in Government of India (DARPG) initiated the task of coordinating, formulating and operationalising Citizen’s charter. The guidelines for formulating the Charter as well as a list of do’s and don’t s were communicated to various government departments/ organizations to enable them to bring out focused and effective charters. If successfully implemented the charter can enable the following: 1. Improved service delivery, 2. Greater responsiveness of official towards the public; and 3. Greater public satisfaction with services.

In continuation of the efforts of the Government of India the Food Corporation of India also took up the responsibility of improving public satisfaction with services offered by it.
FCI Kerala Region was the first among the regions of FCI to go ahead for quality certifications for its depot operations. It was a great challenge for the FCI management in Kerala Region to evaluate its performance from the point of view of the citizen expectations. As FCI is doing inventory and distribution management it was difficult to have a benchmark of quality of service delivery. Food Corporation of India, Kerala Region decided to go for IS/ ISO 9001:2000 certification. The FCI started its operations for attaining ISO certification with a strong commitment from its top management. An ISO cell was started at its Regional Office in Trivandrum for the preparation of Quality Manual, Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) & Work Instructions.

There was initially wide spread opposition from the trade unions and the staff as well as the labourers. Slowly the management overcame the situation and every one wanted to be part of ISO implementation.

The objective was very clear from the very beginning of the process of attaining of ISO certification. The management aimed at attaining ISO certification for all 22 depots, 9 district office and the Regional Office at Trivandrum. An ISO Cell was setup in the Regional Office which was directly reporting to the Regional Head to look after the ISO implementation programme. The main duties were preparation of Quality Manuel, SOP and WI. The training of staff / officers to be posted as ISO Co-ordinates and ISO Auditors were performed. The Trained Officials performed awareness programme in all the depot and district offices. All the staff was trained mandatorilyy as part of the ISO certification. The Quality Policy was prepared and circulated among all the staff in the region. The display of Quality Policy was made mandatory in all the depot & district offices and in the regional office also.

Where ever there is a customer interface. Customer feed back were collected on a regular basis and analyzed. Continual improvement and customer satisfaction was given prior importance. FCI Kerala Region attained IS/ISO certification in the year 2005.

The model of bringing excellence in public service delivery (Sevottam) has been developed by involving civil society representatives, NGOs and employees. Indian standard IS: 15700:2005 has been developed as a mark of excellence in public service delivery and the quality certification would be awarded to departments achieving excellence in public service delivery. But the PSUs and most of the other organization which is having commercial nature went for IS/ ISO 9001:2000 Certification as the same was global certification and will give them mileage in its international operations.

The Quality improvement certification aimed at the following points.

 Meant a complete switch over to managing service delivery as per requirement of the citizens
 Transition from administration to good governance by involving citizens.
 Especially for employees at the cutting edge-level or the employees in direct interaction with the customer / citizen
 The frame work is based on the principle of transparency, accountability and citizen-centric governance.
 Delivering services that citizens are keen to receive and not what the government wants to deliver.
 Achieve sevottam is implemented in a time bound manner. A two year action plan has been drawn up by the government for bringing all central government organizations under the ambit of Sevottam


 Publish information about their preparedness for meeting Sevottam requirements in their Annual Reports
 Declare publicly, the quality of service and the grievance redress mechanism available to citizens, and engage in dialogue with citizens or their representatives groups to align their actions with citizen’s expectations.

All organizations in the government will have to have sevottam in coming years. Sevottam starts from the day an organization undertakes itself assessment. The sevottam model is designed in such a manner that each time an organization assesses itself; the system triggers citizen-centric improvements in service delivery. Assessment questions are framed in a manner that even attempt to provide an answer to the question brings out the strengths and weakness of process in the management of public service delivery.

Self assessment and gap identification tools, action plan templates, as well as the requirements standards IS 15700 with guidance material in printed and electronic form available with DARPG.

The IS 15700:2005 standard was published in Dec 2005, India has the honor of being the first country in the world to publish a requirement standard for quality management of public service delivery. The standard consists of 3 Modules, 9 Criteria and 33 elements.. The details are as follows.

1. Citizens Charter Excellence
1.1 Implementation
1.2 Monitoring
1.3 Review

2. Public Grievance Redress Excellence
2.1 Receipt
2.2 Redress
2.3 Prevention
3. Service Delivery Excellence
3.1 Customers
3.2 Employees
3.3 Infrastructure

The model synthesizes the best of compliance and quality systems together to create a two tier measurement system. Assessment findings are based on a combination of process at the parent department level, which is responsible for policy making and outlet level policies are implemented through citizens interface and service delivery.

The various stages for attaining the IS 15700:2005 certification is given below
1. Application : An organization which plans to get IS 15700:2005 should submit an application to BIS along with the fee
2. Processing of Application : The processing of application is done by and the BIS
3. Preliminary visit by BIS – The BIS auditor will do the preliminary Document review
4. Initial Assessment – After the initial review of the document the next is the initial assessment. In the initial assessment if all the items are satisfactory or if there is no non-conformity the auditor recommends for the certification
5. Grant of Licence- If there is no non-conformity against of any of the clauses. Then the IS 15700:2005 certificate is issued.
6. Operation of Licence – The licence is given for aperiod of 3 years. In this three years there will be 3 surveillance audits by the BIS auditors.


7. Renewal, Expiry, Suspension & Cancellation of Licence.: Once the term of 3 years is over the company can appliy for a renewal of the licence with the prescribed application form. If in any of the audits: if there is non-conformity noticed the BIS can give a suspension of the certification or even cancel the licence in the case of major non-conformities.

The FCI Kerala Region have already achieved IS/ ISO9001:2005 certification and will try to achieve the IS 15700:2005 certification in the years to come.