Martin Henry CONGRATULATIONS! Jamaica has been ranked by the World Bank among the top 10 of 130 countries surveyed for how well their regulatory framework supports business. Our country is the only developing country in the top 10. Before the Prime Minister declares a public holiday, let us just note that the ranking is about the regulatory framework, how the system is structured and the time and cost involved in navigating the system to get a new enterprise up and running.
Just a couple of days ago, Bill Clarke, who runs BNS, the most profitable bank in Jamaica, was telling us again that the "big gorilla" of crime was a King Kong obstacle to investment and economic growth. And he was speaking to the media after launching a $1 billion concessionary loan fund to small and medium-size businesses that couldn't get one loan dollar at single digit interest rates before this special facility. So it still is far from being all roses.
But what seriously caught my attention in the story, "How Jamaica joined the top 10", was the World Bank's assessment that investment in modernising the public sector was the main factor in the country achieving a ranking in the top 10. With World Bank money, US$28 million, which has to be paid back, the Government ran a Public Sector Modernisation Project. A key part of the PSMP is the Citizen's Charter, which seeks to treat the citizen as a customer of public services, who has the right to expect efficient, courteous service and value for money, the right to complain and obtain reasonable redress if expectations are not met, and the right to adequate service information. While leading a UNDP project on Science and Technology for Development out of the Office of the Prime Minister and chasing information through the British High Commission in 1993, I stumbled upon the British Citizen's Charter Programme, which the John Major Government had introduced a year earlier. If Britain with a world-class Civil Service, renowned for its efficiency was seeking to improve the delivery of services to its citizens, why shouldn't Jamaica? I figured Prime Minister Patterson, just one year into the job and open to new ideas, would be interested so I sent him a copy of the report, "The Citizen's Charter One Year on". A four-line response came back from the Prime Minister, yesterday, exactly 11 years ago to date, acknowledging the document and enquiring: "How would you like to try your hand at drafting a relevant equivalent for Jamaica?" "I am accepting the challenge to sketch out a Citizen's Charter for Jamaica," I wrote back.
CITIZEN'S CHARTER LAUNCHED
On December 13, '93, to mark the Golden Anniversary of Universal Adult Suffrage, the Prime Minister made a major statement to the House of Representatives, formally launching Jamaica's Citizen's Charter. A lot of work, much of it voluntary, had gone into preparing the stage and the text for that historic speech. Leadership was assigned to the Cabinet Secretariat under Cabinet Secretary Dr. Carlton Davis. Merle Brown, a Senior Director in the OPM, came to head up a Citizen's Charter Unit, which never got the sort of budgetary and staffing support necessary for speed and efficiency. Dr. Garnet Brown had some responsibilities for the Charter, as Director of the Efficiency and Reform Unit in the Ministry of the Public Service.
The Charter was not only divided up among jealously competing units but was tacked on to all kinds of the other responsibilities and was moving too slowly and erratically to fulfil the historic commitments the Prime Minister had made to the nation. In the spirit of the Charter, for openness and providing information to customers, I published the telephone numbers of Brown's unit for public contact, setting off a firestorm. A decade later, if you search the Web under "Government of Jamaica Citizen's Charter" you will find a couple dozen Charters posted by public agencies, but the promised public education campaign, the openness and information, the complaints and redress mechanisms have never really taken off across the Public Service.
APPEAL
I once had to appeal directly to the Prime Minister for access to documents that I had helped to develop. In a prompt response, the PM sent me "the names, addresses and telephone numbers of those who have responsibility for the development and implementation of the Citizen's Charter." High Commissioner Richard Thomas sent me off in '96 to look at the British Programme, as well as to attend a seminar on governance of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which treated me like a high officer of state, found it possible to accommodate my unorthodox request to also visit science and environment facilities. In fact, just this week I received the latest quarterly magazine of the Natural Environment Research Council, which has been coming to me since that visit.
The World Bank's survey underscores some critical improvements through the Public Sector Modernisation/Citizen's Charter Programme. The psychology of rising expectations tends to obscure improvements but some positive changes have taken place, although not to the extent that I would like to see, and which the Prime Minister promised. The much maligned Registrar General's Department has made a turnaround, which is nothing short of fantastic if the bad old days are remembered. A news item last week said the RGD has gone further, cutting lines, crowds and even security through a system of home delivery, which clients have to pay high user fees for but are doing so fairly willingly for improved service. Passport, land titles, customs, and postal services, to name a few others, are way beyond what they were a decade ago.
Re-energised by the World Bank ranking, PM should give the whole business of public service improvement a big push toward the 60th anniversary of Universal Adult Suffrage, this December, and on the eve of retirement from an unusually long innings.
Martin Henry is a communication specialist.
