Doorstep Delivery of Public Services - Delhi's Model of Transforming Public Service Delivery

Enhanced access to public service delivery for citizens forms the very core of good and responsive governance. However, this often becomes a challenge, as, accessing government services can be a hassle for citizens. Citizens can experience long queues at government offices, inconsistencies in the required documentation, among others. ‘Doorstep Delivery of Public Services’ was designed to solve this problem. The program allows citizens to access government services from the comfort of their homes without visiting any government offices. Any citizen in Delhi can book an appointment slot to receive one of the current offer of 100 services by dialing 1076 and being redirected to a centralized call center. A Mobile Sahayak, who acts as the face of the government, then visits the citizen as per the appointment to collect and upload the requisite documents for the service and submit them to the corresponding government offices. Doorstep Delivery therefore creates a stronger foundation for good and responsive governance in the National Capital (NCT) of Delhi, by ensuring engagement with the last mile citizens and ensuring that citizens get the required assistance through institutional mechanisms.

Innovation Summary

Innovation Overview

Problem:

Enhanced access to public service delivery for citizens forms the very core of good and responsive governance. However, this often becomes a challenge for those at the helm of policy making in the government, due to the sheer variety of services offered by a government and the various complications in processes of delivering each of these services. In addition to the challenges within government departments, accessing government services can also be a hassle for citizens; experiencing long queues at government offices, tackling inconsistencies in the required documentation and navigating corruption behaviour that some public servants can embody.

Solution:

Doorstep Delivery of Public Services thus came as an innovative governance reform, which entirely changed the way public service delivery was modeled. Instead of citizens having to go to government offices, the Delhi government decided to deliver the required public services at citizens’ doorstep. The project was launched in three phases of 40 services in September 2018 followed by 30 services in July 2019 and another 30 in December 2019. Doorstep Delivery currently hosts 100 services across 13 departments; these include revenue department services like income, domicile and surviving member certificates - many of which are essentials for citizens to prove their eligibility for government welfare schemes, especially for those who belong to low-income backgrounds. It also offers other essential services related to transport, labor registration, pension, social welfare, food and civil supplies, property and land related services. The government is currently planning to onboard 200 more services.

Modus-Operandi:

Any citizen can book an appointment slot to receive one of these 100 services by dialing a toll-free number, 1076, which redirects them to a centralized call center, who will book an appointment slot for the citizen. A Mobile Sahayak is then allocated to visit the citizen as per the appointment schedule. These Mobile Sahayaks act as a face of the government and visit the citizens to collect and upload the requisite documents for the service and submit it to the corresponding government office, all at a modest fee of INR 50. The status of this service request can be tracked throughout the process through a unique application number. Moreover, the centralized call center has a systematic mechanism to manage all complaints received from the citizens which ensures that any grievances received are redirected to relevant stakeholders and are addressed at the earliest.

Important data-points and objectives:

Doorstep Delivery has thus far received More than 2 Million calls, processed about 430,000 service requests and successfully served 360,000 citizens since the inception of the project, including a major disruption to service delivery caused due to the pandemic. The project currently stands at an average serving 10,000 citizens per month. The Delhi Government ultimately envisages Doorstep Delivery to become the primary mode through which citizens in Delhi access government services. Delhi Government’s aim is to ensure that no citizen has to physically come to a government office for accessing the services they need. More importantly it has been noted that applications received through the Doorstep Delivery mode have minimal rejection rates, as these applications are thoroughly checked by well-trained Mobile Sahayaks before they are introduced in the system.

Vision for the future:

Doorstep Delivery also creates a stronger foundation for good and responsive governance in the National Capital (NCT) of Delhi, by ensuring engagement with the last mile citizens, especially for those who do not have access to the internet or are hesitant to navigate through the portal due to poor levels of IT literacy. It is seen often that technology and IT solutions are leveraged to improve delivery of public services for citizens. However, doorstep delivery of public services went a step ahead to engage field manpower agents, ‘Mobile Sahayaks’ alongside improved systems of online applications to act as a complete interface between government institutions and citizens. Online application mode alone would often not penetrate through citizens who are not technologically competent. These citizens would often have to pay up hefty sums and access middlemen to seek support in filling out online applications for their required public service. The engagement of ‘Mobile Sahayaks’ in the doorstep delivery process ensures that citizens do not have to pay brokers and are able to get the required assistance through institutional mechanisms.

Innovation Description

What Makes Your Project Innovative?

The programme is a relatively new means of engaging with the citizens through a new mode to access basic citizen centric services by dialling a toll-free number over and above the existing physical and online modes. The scheme further has recruited two man-power agencies and a private call centre to manage the supply side management of this new service mechanism. While many governments have engaged private participation in the past to facilitate citizen centric services, the toll-free number to access government services through a ‘Mobile Sahayak’ is relatively new.

What is the current status of your innovation?

The project is in its expansion phase where the erstwhile man-power agency has been replaced with two other companies to manage field operations across Delhi. The administrative department also awarded a contract to re-develop the back-end CRM application software based on gaps identified in the earlier version for appointment booking at the call centre, Mobile Sahayaks allocation, scheduling, and data management. The project is also in the phase of identifying and incorporating 200 more services in FY 2022-23. Further, to ensure better monitoring of the several components of the ‘doorstep delivery of public services’ project’, the government is in the process of engaging a third party organisation to conduct surveys and defining a set of input-output and outcome indicators to feed into a strong monitoring framework for the service.

Innovation Development

Collaborations & Partnerships

While IT solutions to drive better public service delivery is a common practice, what made ‘doorstep delivery of public services’ innovative was the engagement of field manpower agencies. The government has partnered with two field implementation agencies to create an efficient service delivery system at the doorstep of the citizens. The Government, mainly window-officials and street-level bureaucrats were duly consulted.

Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

Citizens were able to get access to essential services at their doorstep without having to make visits to the government office. This also ensured that they do not have to pay up and navigate the maze of brokers and middlemen. For their part, government officials' workload was shared by a private man-power agency. These applications were also vetted by trained Mobile Sahayaks, which meant that applications received through the doorstep mode are less likely to have any gaps and errors.

Innovation Reflections

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

Challenges and Failures

Inter-departmental coordination: The project currently operates at the locus of 14 departments across 100 services. The ‘Mobile Sahayaks’ need login credentials for these departments to log in as departmental users to generate an application which requires strong coordination and various levels of stakeholders across different departments.
Infrastructural Issues: Concerned department websites and central e-District portal has to be extremely functional and has to remain operational throughout to ensure seamless service delivery.
Coordination with beneficiaries: ‘Mobile Sahayaks’ have to coordinate with last mile citizen to provide service, coordination may get affected as citizens are not always available at the allocated time.
Response: Most of these failures are responded to, by a new and improved software CRM application that is expected to address these issues.

Conditions for Success

Conditions for success with respect to this project may include:

A strong word of mouth regarding the experience of accessing Doorstep Delivery as a mode of application. This is essential for ensuring that more citizens choose the doorstep delivery mode over the mode of physical applications in government offices.
Ensuring through proper interdepartmental and inter-stakeholder coordination that citizens are delivered services within the promised time-frame. A strong monitoring and evaluation framework should be able to flag if this really translating at the ground level.
Leadership and guidance fuelled by values and motivation of the current government regime that intends to provide citizen-centric governance, efficient, and responsive governance.

Replication

Doorstep Delivery of Public Services has kept good governance principles at its core, and embodies participative, transparent, responsive, effective and accountable governance. States like West Bengal and Chhattisgarh have drawn inspiration from Delhi’s Doorstep Delivery of Public Services model, further proving its wide acceptance as a model of good governance. Delhi’s success means that citizens in other states are also demanding similar transformational governance from their elected representatives.

Lessons Learned

The Doorstep Delivery of Public services is a disruptive innovation in public service delivery that eases the mode of application for essential public services and aims to provide these services as simplistically as one orders any service today in times of the aggregator age.

Key lessons learnt:

Departmental coordination is key: As an aggregator service, the administrative department in this case must have seamless coordination with all concerned departments.
Back-end software application must be as intuitive as possible to ensure seamless service delivery and the call-centre executives must also have access to back-end and department level activity. So, the government operational back-end must be connected to the new service delivery back-end.
The service delivery partner must have incentives and penalties associated with its performance and the system should get gamified.