A Users' Guide to Measuring Local Governance

Box 5:
Citizen Report Card application in Bangalore, India
The Bangalore Report Cards evaluated user satisfaction for nine key public services/agencies. Useful inputs in
designing the questionnaire were collected through focus group discussions, visits by investigators to offices of
service providers to assess the extent to which information was provided or denied to the public, and interviews with
a limited number of lower and middle level staff from selected public agencies. The CRC data collection was based on
a stratified random sample survey of nearly 1140 households in the 1994 exercise (including the poor) and 1339
general households, and 839 slum dwellers, in the 1999 exercise.
The CRC assessment covered the following aspects: a) Overall public satisfaction (by agency); b) Dimensions of public
satisfaction with respect to staff behaviour, quality of service, information provided; c) Speed money actually paid; d)
The cost of compensatory investments made by citizens. After assessing different services, the agencies involved
were ranked in terms of their service performance. The graph shows the results for the level of satisfaction of general
households with respect to staff behaviour of the nine analysed key public services/agencies. The exercise was carried
out three times – in 1994, 1999 and 2003.
Satisfaction with Staff Behaviour: General Households
% Satisfied
100
80
60
40
20
0
92
54
26
93
51
18
n/a
88
31 26
89
84
33
n/a
24 28 98
34 31
80
11 15 80
89
61
27
BWSSB
BESCOM
BMTC
BMP
Police
Agency
BSNL
RTO
BDA
G. Hospital
1994 1999 2003
Agencies: BWSSB: Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board; BESCOM: Agency for Telecommunication; BMTC:
Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation; BMC: Bangalore Metropolitan Corporation; BSNL: Bharat Sanchar Nigam
Limited; RTO: Regional Transport Office; BDA: Bangalore Development Authority.
Sources:
http://lnweb18.worldbank.org/oed/oeddoclib.nsf/b57456d58aba40e585256ad400736404/d241684df81fce2785256e
ad0062de10/$FILE/ecd_wp_12.pdf
Weaknesses
• CRC applications can face difficulties when
applied in societies that are not open to
feedback and change, or where a tradition of
civil society activism does not exist.
• The CRC does not take into account the levels
of service promised by the agency, for instance
through a citizens’ charter, or the views of the
service providers themselves. Citizen satisfaction
with respect to services can be a product of
their experience, their perceptions as well as
their expectations from the service-providing
agency. Therefore the final assessment may be
biased and may actually underestimate (or
under-report) the quality of services provided.
A Users’ Guide to Measuring Local Governance 105