Reflections from Gummersbach

(October 27– November 03, 2006)
by Philip Peñaflor

Philip Peñaflor

When I joined the electronic forum on New Public Management (NPM), I was glad to gather insights from fellow participants about the need to change or the need for reforms in current administration practices of various governments, in order to maximize government resources and become more effective in providing services to the citizens for their satisfaction.

The cry for reform is very loud and clear, but the question is how to do it. At Gummersbach this question was answered by the speakers and resource persons and also by the participants themselves.

One of the things that impressed me was the Gummersbach Burger Service (Citizen’s Service) where the local government of Gummersbach provides its citizens with a window with which they can go to their local government for assistance on various concerns, and the citizens feel that the local government is concerned for them. At the Burger Service the citizens come for advice on their particular concerns, and they are well attended to by the Burger Service staff. Everyone is well received and given equal attention. There is a benchmark that every transaction should be finished in 10 minutes, meaning to say that the citizen seeking assistance is responded to in 10 minutes time. In that way the citizen is not left waiting forever wondering whether his or her concern will be responded to.

In the Burger Service this is how it works: A citizen comes in, takes a number, finds a chair in a corner while waiting for his or her turn to be called. If the citizen has a child with him or her, there is a children’s corner with some toys for the children to play with while their parents are being attended to by the staff. It’s not only that the Burger Service attends to the concerns of its citizens, but the way it is organized is designed to make the citizens feel welcome and comfortable.

I am thinking of my own country’s situation where citizens find it difficult to get the assistance of their local government. Here in the Philippines, traditionally when citizens go to their municipal hall for assistance they are scrutinized according to how they look like. If they are well-dressed they will be well attended to by the local government staff, but if they are dressed poorly or look shabby they will be bypassed or dismissed as beggars or nuisances, and they will be attended to last. And normally the transactions will take time or will drag on because some of the staff cannot be located or if attending to something else, the citizens coming for assistance are at the mercy of their availability. Worse, if after a long wait the needed staff does not come, the citizen will be told to come back the following day. So the citizen, who might have come from a distant village and feeling weary from the long wait, goes out of the town hall frustrated and disappointed.

But the predicament of the ordinary citizen does not end there, if he comes back the following day he could face the same situation of the previous day and be told to come back again the next day and so on.

I had that experience several years ago when facilitating the transfer of a land title certificate. My brother bought a piece of land from his friend at a lower cost than usual on condition that my brother would take care of the transfer of the certificate of ownership. And my brother asked me to do the task. So I went to the local Register of Deeds and inquired how the transfer of the land title could be done. I was given the instructions such as going to the Bureau of Internal Revenue for assessment of the value for taxation purposes, then paying at the Treasury, etc.

Among the problems I encountered with this process was that the location of the other offices I needed were some distance from each other. I had to take a jeepney (Philippine jeep) ride to go from one office to another just to get somebody else’s signature or to pay some dues. In one office I was told to come back twice because the officer that would sign the papers was absent or was somewhere else. It took me three days to finish the transactions and a week to get the new land title in the name of my brother. Somebody told me that that was already as fast as it gets.

The main challenge of NPM in this country is how we can make government responsive to the needs of its citizens. Sometime ago, there was a TV advertisement sponsored by the Civil Service Commission about good government service. The slogan was “Mamamayan muna, hindi mamaya na.” It means “to attend to the citizens first and not other things first.” The message was very clear. It was an attempt to educate both public servants and citizens on the right of the citizens to an efficient government service. Maybe it gained some awareness for a while, but when the ad was no longer played the business of “mamaya na” came back as usual.

So what are the public officials in office for if they are not attending to the concerns of the citizens? Are they there for themselves only? Unfortunately that is what seems to be. I may be making some sweeping statements here, but that it is not the intention. I recognize that in many local government offices, as well as in several other government departments, there are public officials and staff who are conscientious in their responsibilities. However these could be more of the exceptions to the general observation that public officials are in office more to serve themselves rather than the public.

Going back to the Gummersbach experience, the local governments are not being asked to do big or impossible things. The Gummersbach Burger Service is a simple and doable activity that local governments in the Philippines can easily undertake. Of course there can be other innovations that we could do, but the Burger Service model is good example to begin with.