Citizen Charter in Nepali Public Sector Organizations: Does it Really Work? 18 Citizen Charter in Nepali Public Sector Organizations: Does it Really Work?

Citizen Charter is an instrument of citizen-centric governance that confirms quality in public service delivery by holding public sector organizations directly accountable, responsive, and transparent. In this regard, this study aimed to disclose the current picture of Citizen Charter in Nepali public sector organizations from service users’ perspectives. For this, the survey was conducted in key six public sector organizations of Lalitpur Metropolitan City by using the client exit interview method, with the help of a semi-structured interview schedule. The study result indicates that the use of the Citizen Charter is extensively low. Service users are not fully aware and well informed about it, and its values. Service users prefer to receive services by asking from duty holders, intermediates (agents), and previous service users than the Citizen Charter. Service users believe that the promises of the Citizen Charter and the behavior of duty holders are inconsistent. However, some service users are demanding services as per the Citizen Charter.


Introduction
At present, almost all countries in the world, including Nepal, have implemented the New Public Management (NPM) principles to make public sector governance competent, effective, efficient, responsive, prompt, transparent, and accountable at all levels. Within the principle of NPM, public sector governance shifts the focus of duty holders to service users (Mang'era & Bichanga, 2013). Previously, the public service was dominated by duty holders, but now the service users are put in priority.
Many public sector organizations have, therefore, adopted a service user's slant to improving the quality of services to achieve the citizen's satisfaction. In this backdrop, Citizen Charter has become one of the noticeable quality assurance strategies (Acharya, 2010). Citizen Charter is viewed as a public document setting out standards to which implementation, lack of training, orientation and awareness among duty holders, lack of awareness among citizens, lack of regular, active, and effective publicity and communication.
Citizen satisfaction from public service is crucial for every government in the world, and Nepal is not exceptional. The Government of Nepal has made numerous attempts to make public sector governance more effective and efficient.
The Citizens' Charter was adopted alike in the style of the British model in 1998. Thenceforth, all organizations displayed the Citizen Charter, and are subsequently conducting their activities (Tamarakar, 2010). The Nepali Citizen Charter labels services, means of delivery, service fees, required time, concerned authorized person, and section/unit that performs the actions and the process for the expression of the grievances.
Although this whole concept and process are clearly stated in the Citizen Charter, many service users still do not use it for a variety of reasons.
As per Central Bureau Statistics (2012), 123 languages are spoken in Nepal, but the majority of Citizen Charter written in the Nepali language, which is not understood by all service users.
Nepal is a country with a 67 percent literacy rate (Central Bureau Statistics, 2011). This indicates that the Citizen Charter written in the Nepali language is not understand by service users who do not understand the Nepali language.
Similarly, Citizen Charter in the Nepali language also does not convey any information to visually impaired service users. As a result, service users do not receive services on time, face irritation, feel disappointed, and become victims of corruption.
Efforts have been made to create a convenient environment for citizens so that they can receive services without any difficulties (National Planning Commission, 2019).
To get services on time, some service users seek the help of intermediate rather than using the Citizen Charter. Although service users are well known about the procedures, they are unable the customers are entitled (Nikos, 2000). In the same vein as Nikos, it can be argued that the Citizen Charter is a written public document which shows the commitment of the duty holders to the service users concerning quality and service standards. It consists of what the institution does, types of services it provides, obligations and responsibilities of service users and duty holders, required documents, timeframe, service charges, input options, complaint, and redress mechanisms, and how the service user may pursue redress if they are dissatisfied with the services.
Citizen Charter is, therefore, the most accessible way for service users to find information about the services provided by the organizations.
The idea of the Citizen Charter evolved to meet the needs of service users that they are entitled to. Citizen Charter believes that service users are the primary consumers (Taylor, 1999). It confirms the quality, reduces red tape, and delays in public service delivery. That is why Garg (2006) argued that the use of Citizen Charter is reflected as citizen-centric governance. It helps service users to get quality service without delay or obstruction.
It can, therefore, be argued that the successful implementation of the Citizen Charter has several advantages in the context of developing countries.
It empowers clients/citizens; equips clients with their entitlement to quality services; bridges the gap between the policy, vision, and mission of the organization and its implementation; outlines the responsibilities of the organization and its clients; delivers transparency and accountability; and is a hallmark of responsive and citizenfriendly governance (Malik & Meena, 2004 to go, to whom to talk, and so on. That may be the reason Beniwal (2005) argued that the Citizen Charter is nothing, but it is a simple document that is hanged/ painted on the wall and get dust.
In this backdrop, after the implementation of the Citizens' Charter in all Nepali public sector organizations, it is very important to know whether it is just a simple document that is hung/ painted on the wall and gets dust or does it work actually? This is the main concern of the study.  (Citizens'Charter, 2012(OECD, 1996Toress, 2003;Drewry, 2005;CGG, 2008;MoCS, 2012cited in Nigussa, 2014 and Nepal (Citizens'Charter, 1998) (Dhakal & Ghimire, 2009).

Principle of Citizen Charter
The first report of the charter introduced six principles of public service, namely standards, openness, information, choice, non-discrimination, and accessibility (Major, 1991). The second report revised these principles (Major, 1994).
Information and openness have been combined, while choice has become a choice and consultation.
Non-discrimination and accessibility have been eliminated, and standards have been maintained.
Courtesy and helpfulness, putting things right and value for money have been introduced (Falconer & Ross, 1999). Furthermore, in 1998, the Labor Government re-launched the Charter, which introduced nine new principles viz. set service standards, be open and provide full information, consult and involve, encourage access and promotion of choice, treat everyone fairly, put things right when they go wrong, use resources effectively, innovate and improve, and work with other providers. Public service should be delivered to service users within these nine principles.

Citizen Charter and Good Governance
Good Governance is the practice and exercise of authority which is based on accountability, transparency, responsiveness, equity and inclusiveness, effectiveness and efficiency, rule of law, participation, and consensus-building (United Nations Development Programme, 2000).
It is indicated as efficient public service, a reliable judicial system, and an administration that is accountable to the public (World Bank, 1989). It is, therefore, something that the citizen can feel good with the public service. Service users who are faced with unnecessary difficulties in accessing services are labeled poor or bad governance.
Many of the principles of good governance are, therefore, identical to those of public services.
In public service, the Citizen Charter is a means of translating the principles of good governance into practice. The main driving force for different countries to formulate and implement the Citizen Charter is the pursuit of transparency, accountability, and responsiveness (Torres, 2006).
The Citizen Charter is, therefore, an instrument of good governance that imparts the principles of openness, accountability, and responsiveness in public service by providing all relevant facts to the service users.

Citizen Charter and NPM
In 1989, Christopher Hood launched NPM intending to reform the public sector. It is based on market ideas, competition, contracting, transparency, results, efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of public service delivery (Nigussa, 2014).
NPM focused on better delivery of public service (Hood, 1991). Since the beginning of the NPM principle, a variety of approaches have been used in public sector governance. Among them, Citizen Charter is one that clearly support NPM principles.
As part of the NPM, it is initiated to encourage duty holders to be responsive and inform citizens about service entitlements, standards, and rights (Drewry, 2005). Therefore, it is a tactic of the NPM that improves the standard of public service. It can be seen as just one aspect of NPM's sprawling agenda and modernization of the public sector (Drewry, 2005). Promptness, accessibility, transparency, accountability, responsiveness, efficiency, and effectiveness of public service can be ensured directly or indirectly through the Citizen Charter, which is the main agenda of NPM. Therefore, the Citizen Charter is a tool that implemented the value of NPM in public service.

Citizen Charter in Nepal: Policies and Practices
The to place publically within the office premises, to be visible to all, and to carry out activities/providing services as per its standard. As per this act, the Citizen Charter shall contain a detailed statement of the service offered by the Office and its nature, the procedure to be followed by the service users for obtaining the service, the estimated time for providing the service, the description of the officer responsible for providing the service and his/her chamber, the details of the fees to be charged or any other amount to be paid, if any, for receiving the service. Departmental action may be taken

Methods
In several areas of public administration and governance research, a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches is commonly used.
However, this study used a quantitative approach, which is based on positivism (Akbar, 2011).
The ontological position of positivism is that there is a single and objective reality (Castellan, 2010 Table 1 Before finalizing the interview schedule, suggestions, feedback, and comments made by peers, examiners, and experts were considered and addressed accordingly. After that, an interview schedule was translated into the Nepali language, and reverse translation was done to ensure the consistency of the language. The interview schedule was pre-tested to remove redundant elements from the interview schedule. Finally, data was collected from selected organizations using the pre-tested questionnaire during office hours. Before administrating the interview schedule, respondents were carefully informed of the study objective, and assured that information would only be used for this purpose. Privacy was also ensured, and information was neither manipulated nor criticized in any way whatsoever.
The data collection and cleaning process was carried out simultaneously. Throughout this process, each interview schedule was reviewed manually, and open responses were recoded.
After this, the data was entered into the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software to obtain the required information. Based on the intent and research questions; frequency, percentages, cross-tab, and the mean were calculated. Finally, the data was described, analyzed, compared, and finally generated meaning from them.

Results
The result of this paper presents basic demographic information of the respondents, information on services, and Citizen Charter. The issues discussed here are all data based. The results are described as follows:

Background Characteristics
The demographic characteristics of respondent's/service users are categorized into three different categories, namely gender, age, and education, as presented in Table 3. It is clearly seen that the total numbers of male service users are higher than females. The age of service users is broadly classified into five groups' viz.

Level of Service
The satisfaction of the service users from

Figure 2. Knowledge and Sources of Information of Citizen Charter
Source: obtained from primary data of the service users, and raised the question of the quality of public service. It does not mean that there is no policy, legal, and institutional arrangements to ensure the quality of public service, of course, there is, but service users are not fully satisfied with services. It seems like all the efforts taken by the government are becoming wastage. The Government, therefore, needs to take concrete steps to ensure positive images.
For this, service design, delivery, monitoring, and evaluation mechanism needs to be reconsidered.

Knowledge of Citizen Charter
The use of the Citizen Charter depends on how well the service users are informed. Charter, whereas 11.5 percent of service users reported that they are unaware, even though almost all service users were literate. Most of the service users who knew Citizen Charter reported that they get information from hoarding-board (41.2%). Family and friends are the second major sources of information (25%) followed by duty holders (15%), social media/website (7.30%), and radio (5.6%) (see Figure2). Undeniably, the successful use of the Citizen Charter depends on its knowledge, therefore, proper communication and awareness are required to convey the essence and value of the Citizen's Charter. When service users realize the value of the Citizen Charter, they proactively use and demand services as specified therein. The problem is that the duty holders failed to fully convey its importance, and the service users also do not internalize its value.

Elements of Citizen Charter
The use of the Citizen Charter while receiving public service depends on several things, such as knowledge, location, content, language, and so on. In this regard, the study also generated data on the different elements of the Citizen Charter.

A significant proportion (83.1%) of service users
reported that the Citizen Charter is displayed in a noticeable place. It is also clearly seen that there is a huge gap between knowledge of the Citizen Charter and knowledge of its content. As only 36.2 percent of service users know its contents.
It is interesting to note that a large proportion (87%) of service users reported that the language of Citizen Charter is easy and simple to read and understand. Eighty-three percentage of service users reported that they do not receive services as set out in the Citizen Charter. Citizen Charter also clearly mentions the time taken for receiving services. Two-third of the service users reported that they did not receive services on schedule as set out in the Citizen Charter. These evidences show that public sector organizations are not delivering services on time as mentioned in the Citizen Charter, as stated by Dhakal and Ghimire (2009). From this discussion, we can say that the Citizen Charter failed to meet service users' expectations. It is raised the question of the effective implementation of the Citizen Charter. It indicates that the implementation of the Citizen Charter in public sector organizations does not seem to be very successful.

Assistance to Receive Services
The service users receive public service with the assistance of various people. Bearing such a thing in mind, this study intended to identify the ways the services were received. Twenty-two percent of service users received services by asking duty holders, followed by friends/family (21.5%), asking with other service users (17.5%), and intermediates/agents (17.5%), Citizen Charter (15.8%), and asking with people who received previous service (5.6%) (see Figure 3).
It is interesting to note that Pokharel, Dahal, and Adhikari (2017)

Reasons for not Using Citizen Charter
This study has also identified the reasons for not using the Citizen Charter, as presented  Figure 4. The service user cited several reasons for not using the Citizen Charter. These include ignorance, agent/ intermediate, unclear procedure, unfamiliarity, and not located in a noticeable place. One in four service users reported that they are not using Citizen Charter because they are not familiar, followed by agent/ intermediate (20.8%), ignorance (20.2%), not located in a noticeable place (18.8%), and unclear procedure (13.4%) (see Figure 4). It is providing a broader view of why service users are not using the Citizen Charter. If issues are unfamiliarity with the Citizen Charter, intermediate existence, ignorance, not situated in a visible location, and unclear/complex procedure; the concerned stakeholders should, therefore, focused on these issues as earliest to make the Citizen Charter workable.

Importance of Citizen Charter
The use of the Citizen Charter depends upon its importance, and use it when service users perceive its importance in public service.
This study also generated information about the importance of the Citizen Charter in the view of service users. Majority of the service users (36%) believed Citizen Charter as quite useful in receiving public service, followed by useful (24.3%), little useful (20.9%), very useful (13%), and not useful/gimmick (5.6%) (see Table 4).

Reasons for not Utilizing Citizen Charter
Source: obtained from primary data More or less 73.5 percent of service users are accepted that Citizen Charter is important in the service receiving process, but there is a huge gap in its use. Ideally, services users accepted that Citizen Charter is essential; however, in practice use of Citizen Charter is considerably low. Service users believed that the Citizen Charter promises a lot of things, but it is not enforced as specified in it. That is why most of the service users do not use the Citizen Charter in receiving public service.

Duty Holders Behavior Consistent with Citizen
Charter Citizen Charter is a statutory public document that displays the commitment of the duty holders to service users regarding quality and standards of service. In this note, the service users were asked to be consistent between the information referred to in the Citizen Charter and the way duty holders have dealt with it. Principally, the action and behavior of duty holders should be consistent with the Citizen Charter. Evidence indicates, however, that there is little consistency between the information in the Citizen Charter and the way duty holders have dealt. A little (35%) consistency between the information as set out in the Citizen Charter and the way the duty holders have dealt with it, followed by to some extent (31.1%), to large extent (11.9%) and don't know (4%). Approximately one in five (18.1%) service users experienced that there is not any consistency between the information as set out in the Citizen Charter and the way duty holders have dealt with it (see Table 5). This reveals that there is a huge   A few of the duty holders ask the service users to comply with the Citizen Charter, and provide public service accordingly. From all of these, it can be pointed out that the implementation of the Citizen Charter in public sector organizations in Nepal has minimal impact on public service delivery.
It has failed to empower and support the service users to obtain better, transparent, accountable, and citizen-friendly public service as well. In this respect, the study stated that the Citizen Charter in Nepali public sector organizations has not yet been quite successful. Service users are facing challenges, hassle, harassment, annoyance, and dissatisfaction in accessing public service. As Beniwal (2005) said, in Nepal also, the Citizen Charter is nothing, but a simple document that is hanged/ painted on the wall and getting dust.
Despite these gloomy picture, Citizen Charter also has some positive impact on public service. It has opened up opportunities to get informed public service that service users are entitled to. As a result, some service users are demanding services in accordance with the Citizen Charter.

Conclusion
Even if the Citizen Charter enforced by the Government of Nepal since 1998, its user rate is very low. Service users have a lack of full knowledge and information about its value.
In particular, service users rely on manual communication from duty holders, intermediates, and previous service users than Citizen Charter.
Irrespective of these, the Citizen Charter has raised awareness about service entitlements and standards. The use of the Citizen Charter relies on plentitude aspects, therefore, considering only one aspect is not enough. Citizens should be constantly informed of its essence via various means, such as local FM, newspapers, TV, social media, and so on. Similarly, the role of duty holders cannot be ignored, so that, they should be regularly trained, oriented, and sensitize to make the Citizen Charter workable. Also, service users should be notified and encouraged to use the Citizen Charter via the help desk. The chances of using the written/printed Citizen Charter is very low; thus, the audio-video Citizen Charter can be enforced in the local language, and should be updated reviewed, monitored, and evaluated regularly. In this way, the usage rate of the Citizen Charter can be increased.
There are extensive areas available for future research as sequel studies. It may be a compliment for understanding more about the Citizen Charter.
This study offers several insights that can be used as a guideline for future study. Some of the potential areas, which could not be covered by the present study, but could be more useful for future researchers, are suggested as follows: • This study is delimited to 200 respondents (service users) and doesn't cover duty holders' perspectives. It would be interesting if the perspectives of both duty holders and service users are integrated into a single study.
• This study is also delimited to central level public sector organizations. Therefore, these types of research could be conducted in local-level public sector organizations for comparative study.
• This study is based on a quantitative approach, and descriptive in nature, which is unable to explore hidden issues of Citizen Charter. Thus, this kind of study can also be done by merging quantitative and qualitative approaches.