Recently, the government has launched a number of initiatives aimed at spurring economic growth and improving the delivery of public services in the country. The ambitious ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’ programmes are aimed at achieving these goals. In this context, a number of steps have been initiated to reform the bureaucracy to ensure better performance and accountability. However, these reforms are mostly aimed at higher and middle level bureaucrats with the assumption that reforming these layers would automatically translate into better performance from the frontline public servants who are at the cutting edge of service delivery and come in direct contact with the citizens, e.g., in tehsil, block and panchayat offices, public distribution system outlets, primary health centres, etc.

Can public policy goals be achieved without paying adequate attention to improving the working conditions and performance of these frontline public servants? These workers interact directly with the citizens in the course of their work and exercise substantial discretion in the execution of their responsibilities. The way they behave and perform significantly affects the delivery of services and perception of quality of governance in the minds of the people. The actions of these workers effectively become the public policies being implemented by the government. It can be said that public policy is actually made in the daily activities of these workers. They often exercise discretion in carrying out their responsibilities, giving rise to agency issues in their performance. However, their actual performance is heavily dependent on their working conditions. They are often faced with low resources and high expectations from both the public and their superiors. It may also be difficult to measure their performance as goal expectations may be vague or conflicting. They may also not be receiving adequate training or guidance in implementing new policies or rules and their incentives may not be aligned with the changes that are sought to be enforced from the top. This issue is particularly relevant in the age of information and communication technologies (ICTs) where they are expected to become IT-savvy to help in implementing a number of citizen-centric e-governance services. 

Therefore, it is clear that if public policy is to become effective, frontline workers must be taken fully on board. We must recognize that focusing on frontline workers offers an alternative, bottom-up approach to improving implementation on the ground. They should be central to any reforms. For example, if the delivery of health services is to improve significantly, the frontline ASHA workers must dramatically improve their performance.  How can these public servants be made to perform better and held accountable?

First, we must recognize that frontline workers can be a source of great innovation and administrative entrepreneurship by properly channeling the flexibility and discretion that they enjoy. Providing them with adequate resources and building their capacities to function effectively in the present IT age can encourage and motivate them to innovate in their work and become effective instruments for implementing public policy on the ground. Improving capacities and harnessing their local knowledge in improving the citizen interface will also make the work more meaningful for the workers themselves.

Secondly, empowerment and participation of citizens in governance and demand side pressures from the end users are crucial in improving the performance of these workers. As these workers directly interact with the citizens, participation of citizens and end-users can help in effectively improving the quality of service delivery and accountability.

Thirdly, government must aim at using ICTs effectively in all domains at the cutting edge of service delivery to ensure that services are provided uniformly and according to pre-defined quality standards to all citizens. The Digital India programme aims, inter alia, at precisely this goal and must be made a cross-cutting endeavour across all government ministries and departments. Capacity building of the frontline workers in deploying ICTs holds the key to improving public service delivery. For example, if ASHA workers can be trained to use a hand held tablet to collect data on patients and diseases in villages and transmit them in real time so that timely treatment could be planned and delivered through the primary health centres, it would revolutionize public health care system in the country.

Fourthly, it is often seen that these workers routinize their work and ration the services as a way of coping with inadequate resources, capacity and pressures. Regular audits on the quality of service delivery can be an effective way to reducing the discretion of these workers in the implementation of public policies and delivery of services. It is evident that the actions of frontline workers constitute a key part of how the overall quality of governance is perceived by the people. They also play a vital role in reaching ‘hard to reach’ groups, such as those living in remote villages or tribal communities. It is important that we recognize the need for reforming this layer of bureaucracy so that implementation of public policies and delivery of services can be improved from ‘bottom-up’.  We must focus the content of reforms at these workers to bring in effective change in the quality of governance on the ground.

The above article was originally published as “Take Frontline Workers on Board to Make Public Policy Effective” in Deccan Chronicle on March 18, 2016. The views are personal.