Within days of the Right to Information Act being implemented, the Core Group of Administrative Reforms has cleared a proposal for setting up a citizen audit of key Government programmes.The scheme, yet to be named, is being patterned on the lines of the ‘‘Charter Mark’’ scheme of the United Kingdom, where the Prime Minister gives the coveted stamp of standarization to services, departments and ministries.Cabinet Secretary B K Chaturvedi today chaired a meeting of the Core group and was given a presentation on how India’s own Charter Mark scheme would work. It was decided that 10 key Departments/Ministries including Health, Education, Power, Telecom and Transport be picked in the first lot.The scheme is to be implemented from March 2006 and the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) is shortly to move for getting required approvals from the Cabinet.The proposal is for all offices of the Government to be compliant with the minimum standards laid down under the programme within two or three years.This involves:• An approved citizen charter arrived at after discussions with citizens’ groups• A nodal officer (Joint Secretary level) for the charter• A task force for implementation and review of the charter• Publication of grievance and redressal proceduresThe programme has been in the works for about a year, with substantial funding from the World Bank and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) being appointed as the partner in its conception stage.This has been tested on a sample basis in Posts and Telegraph department, the Punjab and National bank, Consumer Affairs, Provident Fund and so on. Several NGOs, including Transparency International, were involved in the sample testing.The nodal agency for implementing the scheme will be the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and training of officials is already underway. The BIS will now have to develop a framework for awarding Charter Mark to individual Depart-ments/Ministries and offices which demonstrated exceptional performance and are considered critical to ‘‘citizen-centric governance.’’DoPT officials said that before drafting the framework, the functioning of the Charter Mark in UK, the Malcolm Balridge scheme in USA and the ISO 9000 series in Europe were examined. At present, there are an astounding 111 charters drawn up by various Departments/ Ministries by the Central Government in India as well as 656 Charters by State Governments.But since it was felt there was no accountability in the implementation of these charters, a fresh national initiative was mooted.
