Public Service in Sri Lanka: Proposed Customer Service Charter - 18 November 2017

 

Public Service in Sri Lanka: Proposed Customer service charter

The main objective of the Sri Lanka Public Service is to serve their stakeholders. The most important stakeholder in this regard is the general public in Sri Lanka, who yearn for an efficient and productive service from those in the public service. To realise such a public service, the culture of the public service as a whole and the attitudes of public servants as individuals need to change for the better.

The main barriers to realising this objective in Sri Lanka appear to be as follows:

1.   Political appointments to the public service from top to the bottom have made public servants not responsible or accountable for the service they provide;

2.   Lack of a formulated policy framework to guide public servants in their work;

3.   Lack of a Sri Lanka Public Service value system for public servants to uphold;

4.   Abundance of public servants, who do not have a specific role, responsibility or discipline;

5.   Intervention of politicians in the public service;

6.   Despite their salaries being funded by the public purse, they believe that the public owes them for providing their services; etc.

The success of the public service lies in delivering an efficient and productive service to the general public, who is their customer.

First and foremost, the Government needs to define and set up a value system for the Sri Lanka Public Service. This system needs to be set up by a professional body qualified in public administration and customer service, and in consultation with the public service and the general public. Elected governments must avoid interfering in this process.

Such a value system must specify that the entities dealing with the general public need to be professional, comprehensive and understanding. All entities and their staff should commit both individually and collectively to uphold the Sri Lanka Public Service Values, such as impartiality, commitment to service; accountability; respectfulness and ethical behaviour. In order to make this cultural change in the public service possible, both encouraging and corrective measures may be used.

In addition, each Department and Agency in the Sri Lankan Public Service needs to develop a customer service charter of its own. It should set out each entity’s commitment to provide their customers with an excellent service, they could expect. The public service needs to consider serving the general public at the forefront of everything they do. Their services need to provide quality, consistency in the information they provide, needed support, advice and assistance to help them achieve their legal and just requirements.