VnnNews – Vietnam should rate government agencies to clarify which serve the people well and which badly, suggests Dr. Tran Ngoc Anh, a Vietnamese-American expert on public policy.
 |
< />
The author of this contribution to VietNamNet’s forum on administrative reform is Indiana University (USA) Professor Tran Ngoc Anh. Anh earned his doctorate in public policy at Harvard University.
Transparency in service quality
Once I went to do some banking business at a branch of the Bank of America in Boston. That evening, Bank of America called me to ask for my comments about that branch’s service quality. They asked me about the branch’s work, staff attitude and staff knowledge and my satisfaction.
Later, I learned that they used my comments and those of other clients to build an ‘Index of Service Quality’ and they ranked their branches based on this index. Through such a ratings system, Bank of America knows clearly which branches try to improve their service quality. Then they reward the staff and officials there. This engenders a race to improve quality among branches.
In 1997, five Latin American countries – Bolivia, Brazil, Honduras, Nicaragua and Peru — successfully tested a ‘Municipal Scoreboard’ system to rate the service quality of local government. The model has now spread to many countries in the world.
In Vietnam, the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and professor Edmund Malesky have rather successfully implemented a ‘Provincial Competitiveness Index.’ Vietnam can apply this model to raise the quality of public service.
Four questions about ratings in Vietnam
First, let’s ask which government agencies supply public services. Schools, hospitals, and village People’s Committees provide essential public services to the people. Tax, customs and business registration offices provide necessary services for enterprises. If service quality in agencies like these is not improved, the people and businesses will suffer. That’s why it’s a good idea to rate and rank the quality of service in these agencies.
How can rating can help raise public service quality for the people? Vietnam doesn’t have measurements of public service quality yet, so it is difficult to differentiate among agencies that do their job well and those that perform their duty poorly. If we have ratings for wards in a city or schools in a province or for all taxation branches, everyone will know which of them are good and which are bad. This establishes a foundation for giving rewards, promotions and reprimands.
In such a rating system, the good agencies are not the top-ranked, but the agencies that improve their ranking the most from year to year. This will be the motivation for government agencies to race in serving the people.
What is necessary to establish an effective public service rating system? There are three major conditions. First, the leaders of government agencies or local authorities must be determined to give better service to the citizens. Second, money is needed to fund the evaluations. This can come from the state budget or donors like the United Nations, Asia Foundation, World Bank, or national foreign assistance programs, to name a few. Third, the surveys ought to be managed by experts on polling. Qualified independent organizations can be hired to do this job. This can help protect the people and enterprises so they will speak truthfully.
Last, what’s the right way to conduct such a rating program? There are four steps. First, appropriate questionnaires must be designed. Second, it is the consumers of services that should be polled (if rating a hospital, it is necessary to question patients). Third, the survey results should be used to build a public service quality index. Finally, agencies should be ranked based on this index.
Rating agencies that provide services to the public will make service quality transparent. It will give a clear indication who is not up to par or gives a hard time to those who need help. Thus it is a good basis for assigning rewards and punishments. Rankings are an effective tool to motivate the leaders of local and functional offices to better serve the people.
If other readers believe, as I do, that transparency and responsibility are the keys to reform public service in our nation, from medicine and education to the tax system, we all need to get to work to make it happen.
Tran Ngoc Anh
Comments
You must be logged in to post a comment.
