Improving Governance in Public Systems

Relevance: mains: G.S paper II: Governance

Innovations which exist in the public domain are often overlapping and are not restricted to a particular category. However, for a better understanding, innovations in public systems may be broadly categorized.

Types of Innovation:

1. Service Innovations: intend to introduce a new service, product or improvement in the quality of an existing service or product.

• Bhart Interface for Money (BHIM) is a mobile application developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) which enables e-payments directly through banks.

2. Service Delivery Innovations:create a new or improved way of delivering specific public service to the citizens that aim at improving accessibility, targeting user needs more accurately, bringing in simplification of procedures etc.

• Common Service Centers (CSCs) are the access points for delivery of essential public utility services, social welfare schemes, healthcare, financial, education and agriculture services, apart from a host of Business to Citizen (B2C) services to citizens in rural and remote areas of the country. It is a pan-India network catering to the regional, geographic, linguistic and cultural diversity of the country, thus enabling the Government’s mandate of a socially, financially and digitally inclusive society

3. Administrative/Organizational Innovationstarget to change the hierarchical structures and administrative routines in the Government

• Electronic National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) is a Pan-India electronic trading portal launched in 2016 completely funded by the Central Government and implemented by Small Farmer’s Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC). It creates a national network of physical mandis which can be accessed online thus enabling buyers, situated even outside the State, to participate in trading at the local level.

4. Policy Innovationsbring about the systemic culture of nurturing fresh ideas. Best practices that have a proven record of sustainability may be incorporated and be advocated as a policy. Drafting a policy for promotion of innovations itself is a policy innovation. This may include incentivizing mechanism, identifying and appointing innovation officers in each Departments etc among others

• National Policy on Biofuels (2018) was first drafted by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy in 2009 but later was shifted to the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas in 2017 and was finally launched in 2018. The policy encourages the use of biofuels by extending appropriated financial incentives under various categories which results in reduced import dependency, a cleaner environment, employment generation etc.

5. Systemic Innovationsemploy new or improved ways of interacting with the citizens and engage them in service design which encourages a participative approach in governance and improves the magnitude of stakeholder consultation in decision making.

• Indian Innovation Growth Program is a public, private partnership of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India and Lockheed Martin Corporation. This initiative throws open a chance to the public to suggest innovative solutions to major societal problems.

Centre for Innovations in Public System (CIPS):

• CIPS, being a national body established by the Government of India in 2010 as an autonomous centre at ASCI, Hyderabad.
• It was established with a mandate to promote innovations in public systems, is working with Central Ministries, State Governments, Union Territories and Not-for-profit organizations to actively promote and disseminate practices which have resulted in enhanced service delivery, increased efficiency and cost reduction.
• CIPS also acts as a platform for sharing and disseminating knowledge on themes of critical importance.

 Effectively promoting Innovations in Public System:

1. Understanding Opportunities and Problems

• Begins with a prompt or trigger including problems, failures and complaints which makes innovation either possible or necessary.
• Attuned to new trends, customer demands, data or technologies and innovations that are happening elsewhere.
• Emphasise better understanding of how people live their lives, and how services are used to help improve them.
• Find new insights into what people need, to end up with a clearly defined problem.

2. Generating and Sharing Useful Ideas

• Prioritise the areas of concern (e.g. health education, infrastructure, water supply, sanitation, PDS etc) which need to be addressed.
• Identify different types and sources of data, information and knowledge that are relevant.
• Channelize data, information and knowledge into a usable form so that it can be fully exploited to support evidence-based decision making.
• Share information collected with wider sets of actors.

3. Collaborating with Like-minded, Stakeholders

• Identify and assess the importance of key people, group of people or institutions
• Define whom to involve in designing a multi-stakeholder process.
• Understand the role of multiple stakeholders who are likely to be involved in promoting innovation.
• Describe the roles and responsibilities of those expected to support the long-term sustainability of innovation.
• Sensitize/build the capacities of relevant stakeholders to develop a culture of ownership and responsibility amongst them
• Create a knowledge repository that facilitates the availability of information in the public

4. Documenting Innovations

While documenting an innovation, the following heads shall be covered

• Concept and Types of Innovations
• Skills and Tools Involved
• Learning based Monitoring and Evaluation System
• Processes and Linkages for scaling up
• Change in Practice
• Use of new knowledge/new use of existing knowledge

Potential Challenges in identifying, documenting and replicating innovations:

• Resource mobilization
• Departmental silos and lack of convergence mechanism’
• Fading away of the innovation due to change in the personnel
• Lack of institutional memory
• Transfer of ownership
• Lack of domain expertise
• Internal animosity between different wings of Government/Organization

Innovative Practice High Potential for Adoption/Replication:

Ecological Sanitation (ECOSAN)

• ECOSAN, an initiative that is one of its kind, offers an economical and simple-to-use option in contrast to the conventional waste transfer methods where the human excreta and body wash waster do not go waste.
• The toilet is in daily use and never smells.
• The urine is collected in a drum/pot outside the toilet for later use, and body wash water is used beneficially by diversion to the trees outside.
• ECOSAN toilets are much more helpful in flood-prone areas as it is completely sealed and would not result in overflow.
• And they are highly useful in drought-prone areas for being a remarkable alternative in the sustainable use of water.
• ECOSAN toilets reduce health risks due to contamination of drinking water by human waste; to prevent ground and surface water pollution, and to reuse the energy content within the human waste.

Use of Plastic Waste in Road Construction

• Disposal of plastic waste is a serious concern in India and one technological approach developed by Prof. Rajagopalan Vasudevan has been found be very useful in utilizing plastic waste on large scale.
• The salient feature of the whole process of constructing plastic roads is simple and easy and does not require any new machinery and industrial involvement.
• The utilization of plastic waste to improve the properties of the bituminous mix offers a very promising alternative with its bilk and eco-friendly usage.
• The plastic roads ensure enhanced load carrying strength, water resistance, negligible maintenance cost and reduction of bitumen consumption by 10 per cent

Urban Greening Activates by Kochi Metro Rail Limited

• Kochi Metro Rail Limited (KMRL) is in the process of adding greenery to the infrastructure being created, thereby contributing to the enhanced green cover in and around Kochi.
• KMRL as a part of the environmental impact assessment report, has to compensate for the trees removed during the process of project implementation by planting trees in the ratio of 1:10

Mother Tongue Based-Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE)

• MTB-MLE is an approach to address the educational challenges faced by the indigenous population in this approach, children start learning in their mother tongue in early grades with a gradual transition to a regional language and an international language.

Establishment of Vision Centres

• Establishment of Vision Centres in rural villages with tele-ophthalmology connectivity with Base Hospital is an effective model to reach patients who otherwise do not have access to quality eye care.
• This model makes eye care services available for the rural population at their doorsteps this leading to considerable reduction of the burden of cost and in preventing avoidable blindness.

Conclusion:

It is fair to conclude that innovations in public systems are indispensable and it is both a continuous process as well as a result. It is also a specific area of high importance where tools methods and approaches are in constant evolution to facilitate identification, documentation and replication of innovations.