In the Case Studies section
eTransparency Case Study No.13
SWAGAT (State-Wide Attention on public Grievance by Application of Technology) in Gujarat State, India
Case Study Authors
Roop Kishan Dave (rkdave@gujarat.gov.in)
Application
In 2003, the state government in Gujarat State, India, introduced an ICT-based communication application to help improve the way that public grievances were dealt with.
Application Description
The state government plays an important role in the lives of citizens and businesses in India including the provision of licences, permissions, funds/loans, subsidies, pensions, land/property/birth/death registrations, and various public services including education, health, law and order, pubic utilities, and other infrastructure. On occasion, these do not proceed as intended, and citizens can submit a "public grievance" - a complaint that their application/registration/case has not been dealt with for a long time without reason given, or has not been dealt with properly. The public grievance system, if it works well, is critical to the transparency and accountability of government, since it offers a key mechanism by which public servants can be held to account for their actions or inactions.
In an attempt to improve the public grievance system, the Gujarat government introduced a new structure - the Grievance Cell - in 1998. It acted as a central point through which citizens could come and lodge a grievance on a standard pro-forma. The Cell was responsible for administering the grievances, including filing, forwarding the complaint to the relevant part of government, issuing reminders, and reporting on grievance resolution rates to the state's Chief Minister (CM: the head of the state government).
Unfortunately, this innovation made little difference to resolution rates. It was then suggested that the Chief Minister become directly involved in the process. Thus arose the idea of SWAGAT day - a single day in each month when applicants can submit long-standing grievances to be reviewed by the Grievance Cell, with hard-to-resolve cases passed up for direct intervention of the Chief Minister. He personally hears these grievances direct from the applicant, takes up the case with government stakeholders involved, and then attempts to resolve the grievance.
Since public grievances could involve any one of the hundreds of government offices spread all over the state, it was seen as impractical to make SWAGAT paper-based. The cost, time and risks of transporting files all over the state was prohibitive. Likewise, the cost, time and risks of transporting officials. "SWAGAT day" only became possible thanks to ICT.
Citizens can register a grievance on any day, and most should be resolved without need for recourse to the SWAGAT mechanism. However, on SWAGAT day (the fourth Thursday of each month), applicants whose grievance has not been resolved can press for that grievance to be taken up under SWAGAT. They can do this by coming to deposit their grievances between 10.30 and 12.30 in a reception/waiting area of the Grievance Cell in the Chief Minister's Secretariat in the Gujarat state capital, Gandhinagar.
The Grievance Cell's SWAGAT manager determines which grievances are and are not eligible. Grievances are only eligible if they have already been presented to the correct agencies (e.g. a lower level of government such as the complainant's district office) but have not been properly resolved. Cases selected are those that are particularly long-standing, or where there is some acute humanitarian issue. Cases passing initial eligibility checks are entered onto the system by data entry staff and are then subject to further data-gathering: the manager contacts the main government department that is the focus of the grievance, cross-checks key elements in the case, and ascertains their status report on the grievance. By 14.30 on SWAGAT day, Cell staff present a summary report to the Chief Minister with details of all the grievances submitted, and their current status. His attention will be drawn particularly to those cases that are outstanding on the day (i.e. for which the status report from the concerned department does not resolve the case). However, the Chief Minister reviews all cases submitted on the day, and may well speak to applicants even where the case is shown to have been resolved on the day. Where the case has not been resolved, the applicant can make a brief initial face-to-face presentation to the CM, who can then contact government staff involved by video-conference or by telephone. Multi-conference facilities are available, enabling discussion between applicant, Chief Minister, and several different officials. The aim is then to resolve these outstanding grievances on the day.
Two examples are given below:
| Case 1 | Case 2 |
|---|---|
An unemployed man from the scheduled castes (groups recognised as subject to discrimination and thus given particular government benefits) applied in 2001 to a government scheme that provides a subsidy plus loan to set up a shop. A decision on eligibility should have been made by the Scheduled Caste Welfare Officer in the local district. However, no decision was ever made, despite the lodging of a public grievance by the applicant. On SWAGAT day, the case was reviewed by the Chief Minister, and the Officer approved the loan and subsidy that day. |
A farmer applied to have his land measured by a government Survey Officer, in order to register its size. The measurement was taken, but was taken wrongly. The farmer asked the Officer many times to re-measure, but this was not done, even after the farmer had got a notice sent via a lawyer. On SWAGAT day, the Survey Officer's boss was involved and - through the Chief Minister's guidance - the Survey Officer was ordered to re-measure the land; which he did within 20 days. |
On the following SWAGAT day, a report is provided to the Chief Minister on the status of action decisions taken the previous month.
Role of ICT
SWAGAT relies on the existing ICT infrastructure, particularly the Gujarat State Wide Area Network (GSWAN), which was commissioned in 2001. It connects the central State Secretariat with all central ministries and departments, with all 25 district headquarters (the second tier of state government), with hundreds of district-level offices, and with all 225 taluka headquarters (the third tier of state government). A relatively simple intranet-based application was developed in order to administer and manage the SWAGAT cases. Follow this link for further details of the technology underlying SWAGAT.
Application Drivers/Purpose
The direct goal for SWAGAT was to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public grievance handling in the state: both directly through SWAGAT and indirectly through the incentive effect on other grievances of staff not wishing to have to be called before the Chief Minister. Although grievances only involve a small minority of citizens, they can have a high profile within local communities and within the media. Therefore, means for dealing with them effectively can bring wider political benefits to a government, as well as providing a demonstrable example of transparency and accountability. SWAGAT was therefore identified as a potential source of politically-valuable public goodwill.
The secondary goals for SWAGAT were to provide an effective e-government application that made good use of the high-bandwidth infrastructure set up in the state, and to create a high-profile application of e-government involving the Chief Minister. Both of these were seen as potentially sending messages inside and outside government about the modernity of government, and the relevance of ICTs.
Stakeholders
The SWAGAT idea came from the Secretary to the Chief Minister, though the system is probably properly seen as "owned" by the Chief Minister himself. The Department of Science and Technology, containing the state's ICT staff, was responsible for the implementation of the system. The system is operated by the government's Grievance Cell. All state officials are stakeholders since all may potentially be called upon on SWAGAT day. All citizens of the state are also stakeholders, particularly those involved directly or indirectly in grievance cases, and especially those who have their case heard under SWAGAT. The IT vendors who provided the state's IT infrastructure can only be regarded as indirect stakeholders, since they benefit only indirectly/long-term from successful e-government projects.
Transparency and the Poor
There has been no specific initiative within SWAGAT to address the needs of the poor. On the other hand, unlike some e-government systems, SWAGAT has been designed in a way that raises few additional barriers to the poor. Anyone with a grievance has the opportunity to be considered under the scheme, and they do not require computer literacy since they are not required to use a computer directly. By using portable equipment, the video-conferencing facility can involve officials in quite remote areas in the state, though applicants themselves present their grievances on SWAGAT day at the state capital.
Impact: Costs and Benefits
The state invested large sums in its ICT infrastructure. Although it was one of the first applications to make use of that infrastructure, these costs are not attributed to SWAGAT. Instead, the only attributed costs are the c.US$20,000 plus in-house development costs for the incremental hardware and application software created to run SWAGAT day. The team handles an average of 70 grievances per month. SWAGAT currently has a resolution rate of nearly 95% of all cases dealt with on the day; a significant improvement on earlier resolution rates.
Comparison figures are not available, but there is a strong perception that the system has reduced the response time and cost of settling grievances: a benefit for both government and citizens. It is hoped that this will have created a better approach to public service provision in the state, with a possible reduction in corruption given the threat that bribes may be reported under the SWAGAT system.
As well as leading to the direct resolution of grievances, SWAGAT has had an even more powerful indirect impact in encouraging state officials to resolve grievances before they reach the SWAGAT stage, given the significant threat that the Chief Minister may become personally involved. Indeed, one of the performance indicators now used for both district and taluka (sub-district) levels of government is "number of grievances received by the SWAGAT programme from that place". The greater the number of cases, the greater the perceived inefficiency/ineffectiveness of that location. Thus many long-standing grievances were resolved after SWAGAT became operational, and bureaucrats now take steps to try to ensure that other grievances do not become long-standing. There is no direct data to indicate how resolution has taken place in these cases.
Perhaps a somewhat unexpected benefit of the system has been to put senior officials - the Chief Minister particularly - more in touch with common concerns about the way bureaucracy operates in the state, and more in touch with various officials throughout the state. Of course, the way in which officials are put in touch with their Chief Minister is not always positive for those officials, since the interaction typically relates to some potential administrative shortcoming! However, even officials have liked the system. Previously, they could be called to the state capital to explain themselves face-to-face before the Chief Minister, with just a limited number of files and perhaps one or two staff members to support them. Now, they remain in their own offices and can call on their entire office staff, files and other resources to help address grievances on SWAGAT day.
As noted, SWAGAT was seen as something of a high-profile test case for e-government. As such, it has been very effective in conveying the desired messages about utilisation of ICT infrastructure, about the ability of e-government to touch issues directly involving citizens, and about the ability of e-government to contribute to the transparency and effectiveness of government. Such messages have been valuable for those involved in trying to roll-out e-government. It is hoped that both the ICT-based image and the better resolution of grievances will have a knock-on of better image and higher 'political capital' for government amongst citizens.
Evaluation: Failure or Success?
The project is relatively new at the time of writing and there has been no independent evaluation of the project, and no attempt yet to identify potential downsides or limitations of the new approach to handling grievances.
Enablers/Critical Success Factors
- High-level support . Because of the Chief Minister's interest in this e-transparency project, there was support from the highest level. As a result, project elements were approved quickly; project resources were released quickly; and hurdles were quickly overcome: those who tried delaying tactics were hauled up to the Secretariat for a dressing down.
- Sound ICT infrastructure . The state has invested a lot of time and money in its ICT infrastructure, but the payoff is the relative ease and relative low cost with which state-wide e-transparency projects can then be implemented. The decision to focus on IP-based systems also paid off because of its user-friendliness, cost-effectiveness, and flexibility.
- Playing the politics . Government machinery operates in two parallel modes: bureaucratic mode and political mode. Successful e-transparency projects must recognise and engage with both modes. Formal agreement on the project opened up the bureaucratic channels, but a lot of behind-the-scenes work had to be done to ensure the political channels did not close up; had they done so, the project would have been scuppered. The political muscle of the CM's Secretariat helped, but it also required a lot of persuasion and influencing skills - ensuring credit was given to certain individuals, ensuring egos were properly massaged, and selecting the right political strategy to persuade specific stakeholders.
Constraints/Challenges
- Time limits vs. demand . SWAGAT only operates on one day per month. Probably, given the large size of the state's population, and the complexity of some grievances, more time is required. The public sector also faces a particular difficulty. In the private sector, if a service proves popular and demand goes up, so does income. In the public sector, if this e-transparency scheme proves more popular and demand goes up, income will not rise, and resourcing will not necessarily rise. This raises tensions over encouraging service demand for e-transparency systems.
Recommendations
- Invest in strong infrastructure . There are financial and political barriers to investing in a strong ICT infrastructure as the foundation for e-transparency and other e-government applications. However, if those barriers can be overcome, there are significant benefits for this type of up-front state investment. Regulatory problems are reduced, contract management problems are reduced, control is increased, and a whole host of ICT-related applications become possible.
- Well-managed private sector involvement can work . While investing in a strong ICT infrastructure is valuable, there are often competency and political problems in running that infrastructure within government. On the other hand, outsourcing totally to the private sector can also cause problems. A good compromise is to lay down a closely-managed and time-limited private sector role. In this project, the ICT infrastructure was planned and designed in-house by government, but it was then implemented on a build, operate, own, transfer basis by a private operator. During the period of operation, quarterly payments are only made if the operator fulfils its service level agreement. That agreement focuses mainly on network up-time but also on other indicators like network performance and maintenance. These indicators are measured by an independent third party to ensure no interference from either the operator or government employees. After eight years of payments, the entire infrastructure will transfer cost-free to government ownership.
- Sticks work as well as carrots . Staff have been pushed into using this innovative e-transparency application not by the promise of any particular reward, but by the threat of what will happen if they fail to become involved.
Further Information
None.
Case Details
Case Editor : Richard Heeks.
Author Data Sources/Role : Project Implementation Role.
Centrality of Transparency : Central. Type : Accountability. Audience : Mixed. Content : Mixed. Sector : Multiple
Outcome : No Independent Evaluation.
Region : South Asia. Start Date : 2003. Submission Date : December 2003.