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mGovernment Case Study No.3

TXT CSC: SMS Service for the Philippines Civil Service Commission

Case Study Author

Emmanuel C. Lallana (lallana@pfgc.ph)

Application Background

By its own admission, TXT CSC - the SMS-based service of the Philippines Civil Service Commission (CSC) - is an effort to "provide citizens with a weapon, a tool to pressure government agencies into examining their systems and procedures towards faster and more efficient delivery of services".

Like many bureaucracies in the developing world, the Philippine bureaucracy is not exactly known for exemplary service. In an effort to improve service, the CSC launched a programme called Mamamayan Muna (Citizens First) to receive complaints, to respond to queries, and to provide assistance for citizens who are dealing with the bureaucracy. From its start, electronic means were available for citizens to send in queries or lodge complaints. But with low Internet penetration, the email service and the Web site were hardly used. A telephone hotline, while useful, operated only on weekdays and only until 5pm. In 2001, the new Chairperson of the CSC introduced SMS as a new channel for Mamamayan Muna . The Chairperson was aware of the widespread use of SMS and believed that such m-government systems would make it easier for people to complain and would thus make it easier for CSC to get leads regarding who is corrupt and where government services are bad.

Original Plans

Originally, TXT CSC was not only seen as a service where people can inquire, complain, suggest and/or commend on anything about government matters. TXT CSC was also conceived as an immediate response system for people dealing with the bureaucracy. For instance, if a citizen in the process of transacting his/her business with government was not given proper attention, was treated rudely, or was asked for a bribe, s/he can immediately report the incident via SMS. The CSC - upon receipt of the complaint - would immediately send a representative to where the complainant is and start a course of action against erring employees, if it is found warranted. When the CSC piloted the immediate response system they discovered more work needs to be done to make it work properly.

mGovernment Costs and Benefits

TXT CSC is run in-house on a limited budget, with an equivalent of one full-time staff member using one PC with a database. A message sent to TXT CSC costs citizens P1.00 (US$0.02). This is much lower than the P2.50 charged by the Bureau of Internal Revenue for citizens to participate in its m-government scheme. Part of the reason is that CSC is not using a fee-sharing arrangement with an application service provider or cellular service provider, as its sister public agency is. CSC resisted suggestions from the cellular service provider to adopt a fee-sharing arrangement as they did not believe the TXT CSC service would generate enough traffic to make fee-sharing work. They also wanted the lowest possible price for the service. The Commission also found the menu-driven system being proposed by the service provider to be too complicated. They believed that texters would want the quickest way to send their message to CSC and would not want to spend time navigating through menus.

Since launching, and in spite of minimal public announcements and promotions, TXT CSC is receiving an average of 1,000 to 1,500 messages per month: among the highest of the government's various SMS-based information/complaint services.

CSC believes that citizens sending them messages would not want to receive a boiler plate response ("Thank you for message, we will look into it and get back to you"). The Commission therefore ensures that its responses to text messages are personalised/customised to the complaint or query. As a matter of policy the CSC must respond to queries and complaints within the day. The Commission is generally able to respond quickly to queries and complaints about other agencies because of pre-existing relationships with these various agencies. It also helps that CSC has supervisory power over all government employees. Nonetheless, CSC is not always able to meet the one-day deadline because of the complexities of interacting with other agencies, and its response time could be better if it had online access to other public agencies

While it has not yet achieved its lofty goal of becoming a weapon of the citizens when confronting an impersonal and inefficient bureaucracy, TXT CSC has become an important resource that Filipinos have in dealing with their government, and it shows that m-government systems do have a value.

Current Plans

The CSC has recently reconceptualised the role of TXT CSC. In addition to its current remit, they will also use this m-government system to support the Public Service Delivery Audit - a programme, in partnership with the Association of Schools of Public Administration, which will rate government frontline services on a systematic basis. Using SMS ratings submitted by citizens, agencies will be categorised. Agencies determined to be delivering good services will be commended. Those that fail the test will be assisted to improve their service delivery. TXT CSC is intended to be actively promoted among the users of all public agencies' services: this is seen as a more purposive use of m-government to improve public services.

Case Details

Case Editor : Richard Heeks.
Author Data Sources/Role : Interviews and Documents; No Direct Role.
Outcome : No Independent Evaluation.
Region : South-East Asia. Start Date : 2001. Submission Date : February 2004.