Enforcing Service Level Management in Government Operations:Example of Lokpal in Action

My idea of a sample Lokpal Action: (with Service Management references in brackets)

A person receives an IT (Income Tax) refund cheque which has an error. His bank account number printed on the cheque is wrong; hence the cheque cannot be credited to his account. Presently, he has two options:

1. He can to go through the extremely tedious and cumbersome cheque re-issue process, on which he has no control after mailing the faulty cheque back.

2. He can also go to the court agains the IT Department to claim damages of effort and unpaid interest. If the court is convinced of his claim, it will award damages which have to be paid by the IT Department (meaning all of us).

Now, anyone who has experienced either government departmental working or judicial processes in India knows that both these options require too much time and enregy, with the end result still uncertian..! (SM: Utility is there, but Warranty is questionable.) Naturally, anyone in this situation is faced with two choices: either go through proper channels and incur lot of expenses of money & time or bribe someone to get things done quickly. The concerned officials always ensure that the 'bribe' seems more attractive than the 'legal, correct, moral' way of getting this done by working fast after bribing and slowing the work if not bribed. So, anyone will choose the lesser of the two costs, eh! Also with bribes, the results are practically guaranteed! (Warranty of Service!)

However, with the Lokpal, things will be very different. The Lokpal/LokAyukt will:

a. investigate and identify the guy who made the mistake (Roles and responsibilities)

b. calculate the damages including the cost of remidiation, (Evaluation) and

c. order the damages to be paid from the errant official's salary within a given timeframe (SLA)..! Why should the rest of the country pay for incompetence of a clerk?!! (Allocation of costs)

In this way, both aspects of the Govt Service: Utility and Warranty (assurance) are protected by Lokpal. The law gives awesome corrective power to the LokPal, and therefore to enable this power to be deliver positive results, it is important to keep it free from political influence, otherwise, it will become another useless appendage of the government machinery. (Maker Cheker parity as in Change Management)

Hence please note that it is extremely important to keep this lokpal outside the political influence, otherwise it will never work..! Please spread this and support the independance of Lokpal.