Two Day Seminar on Sevottam Compliant Citizen’s Charter & Grievance Redress Mechanism Begins Tomorrow


A two-day workshop on Designing & Implementing Sevottam Compliant Citizen’s Charter and Grievance Redressal Mechanism gets underway tomorrow. Shri Prithviraj Chavan, Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions will inaugurate the workshop. Organised by the Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances in collaboration with Performance Management Division of Cabinet Secretariat and FICCI Quality Forum as Consulting Partner, it would be first of the four workshops for 62 Ministries/Departments of Government of India to facilitate them in achieving the Sevottam compliance success indicators under Result Frame Document (RFD).

The aim of the workshop is to facilitate preparation of Sevottam Compliant Citizen Charters and Grievance Redress Mechanism for Ministries / Departments of Government of India and its Organizations for modernizing governance through better and enhanced results oriented Public Delivery System to the Citizens / Clients / Stakeholders.

The Sevottam (excellence in service) framework was designed by DARPG in 2006 as an assessment-improvement framework for public service delivery. It has basically three modules - Citizen Charter, Public Grievance Mechanism and Service Delivery Capability. Each of the modules is further divided into three criteria and eleven elements each. The framework helps Government Departments towards improving their public service delivery. The Performance Management Division of the Cabinet Secretariat has included two modules of the Sevottam framework as mandatory success indicator in the Result Frame Document (RFD) 2010-11 for 62 Ministries/Departments approved under Performance Monitoring and Evaluation System (PMES) by Hon’ble Prime Minister.





The Agenda of the two day workshop is:





· Sevottam Compliant Citizens Charters and Grievance Redress Mechanism

· Modernizing Governance through Strategic Commitment, Awareness and Outreach

· Enhanced Performance and Result in Outcome.





Seven Steps to Sevottam are:





a. Well established system of receipt of grievances

b. Convenient for all users and its wide publicity

c. Timely acknowledgement

d. Time norm for redress

e. Communication of action taken on redress

f. Platform for Appeal

g. Analysis of the grievance prone areas for making systemic improvements





Sevottam framework was initiated in ten Departments of the Government of India having large Public Interface. These are, Department of Post, CBEC, CBDT, Railways, Passport office, Pensions, Food Processing, Corporate Affairs, Kendriya Vidyalaya School and EPFO. All these organizations have declared standards and implemented in pilot locations. The Project is now being extended to 62 ministries of Government of India

The Second ARC in its 12th Report – “Citizen Centric Administration – The Heart ofs Governance” – has recommended that Union and State Governments should make the Seven Step Model outlined in para 4.9 mandatory for all organizations having public interface which was accepted by the Government of India. The ARC had made the recommendations after studying the Sevottam model which the Commission felt was a step in the right direction.