CALLING CITIZENS, IMPROVING THE STATE: PAKISTAN’S CITIZEN FEEDBACK MONITORING PROGRAM, 2008 – 2014 SYNOPSIS In early 2008, Zubair Bhatti, administrative head of the Jhang district in Pakistan’s Punjab province, recognized the need to reduce petty corruption in the local civil service—a problem that plagued not only Punjab but also all of Pakistan. He began to contact citizens on their cell phones to learn about the quality of the service they had received. Those spot checks became the basis for a social audit system that spanned all 36 districts in Punjab by 2014. The provincial government outsourced much of the work to a call center, which surveyed citizens about their experiences with 16 different public services. The data from that call center helped district coordination officers identify poorly performing employees and branches, thereby enhancing the capability of the government to improve service delivery. By early 2014, the province was sending about 12,000 text messages daily to check on service quality. More than 400,000 citizens provided information between the beginning of the initiative and 2014. Known as the Citizen Feedback Monitoring Program, the Punjab’s social audit system became the template for similar innovations in other provinces and federal agencies in Pakistan. Mohammad Omar Masud drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in Punjab, Pakistan, in January and March 2014. Case published February 2015. INTRODUCTION investigation into the behavior of the accused In March 2008, an irate government official district official. But he worried that most of walked into the office of Zubair Bhatti, district Jhang’s 3.3 million residents had no similar coordination officer (DCO)1 of Jhang district, in opportunity for redress. Pakistan’s Punjab province. The official District offices handled services such as complained that one of the land registry property registrations and driver’s licenses, as well employees—someone working only a few steps as health, education, and income assistance away—had asked him for a bribe. “I have been programs. Bhatti suspected that solicitation of trying to tell him that I am a government officer, bribes by district officials for delivery of public but he is still asking for money to register my services was not unusual, yet he lacked the time to property transfer document,” the official effectively spot-check a district administration explained. that comprised almost 20,000 employees. Bhatti, whose job put him in charge of the One option was to let citizens themselves district administration, conducted a surprise raise the alarm. Jhang district already had a inspection and initiated a formal corruption complaint system that enabled the district ISS is a joint program of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Bobst Center for Peace and Justice. Terms of use and citation format appear at the end of this document and at http://successfulsocieties.princeton.edu/about/terms-conditions. ISS invites readers to share feedback and information on how these cases are being used: [email protected]. © 2014, Trustees of Princeton University Mohammad Omar Masud Innovations for Successful Societies coordination officer to initiate investigations. registration office. He followed up by calling However, the process was slow, and few citizens citizens to verify the payments made. had the time and motivation to endure the Bhatti expanded the initiative to other cumbersome process that required personal district offices. He created paper forms for appearances in front of inquiry officers—especially government workers to record the cell phone if the citizens had no idea whether senior officials numbers of citizens visiting the registration were involved in the kickbacks and might retaliate branch and other service facilities. He directed against them. The angered official in his doorway mobile service providers such as livestock had courage, Bhatti said: “He probably knew that extension workers, who visited farmers to provide I wasn’t getting a cut.” animal husbandry services, to record farmers’ cell Bhatti wondered whether there was a way phone numbers so he could call farmers. that new technologies could be applied to help Bhatti believed that making personal calls to monitor the day-to-day conduct of government citizens sent a powerful message that he and other service workers. He decided to experiment by high-level officials were honest, trustworthy, and ordering officials of the property registration seeking to help. In the beginning, the calls took office to collect the cell phone numbers of citizens only about 15 minutes a day, and Bhatti jotted who used the service each day and then send a down any negative feedback from citizens for daily list to his office. Bhatti called random necessary action. He realized he could build numbers from the list and asked the people who credibility for the government by reaching out to answered about their experiences during their citizens rather than waiting for disgruntled visits to the registry. citizens to come to him. “I would see the word-of- The experiment paid off. Bhatti discovered, mouth effect,” Bhatti said. “Anybody who had for example, that many visitors to the property received a call was telling people that the DCO registration office did not understand the fees and had called” and was interpreting the gesture from taxes they were required to pay. That lack of the country’s elite cadre of civil servants as a understanding, coupled with low literacy, made promise of change. Bhatti could sense the many citizens dependent on the services of deed excitement in citizens’ voices when he called. It writers, who approached them in the office and reassured him. “Goodwill is a very powerful force offered to help prepare their documents. The deed when you apply it. You can take more action writers typically overstated the actual fees the against bad people,” he said. registry required, pocketed the difference, and National press coverage of Bhatti’s initiative paid kickbacks to property registration clerks to caught the attention of Shahbaz Sharif, Chief get priority and special preference in the Minister of Punjab, who was eager to expand the registration process. model to other districts across the province. Sharif Bhatti introduced a receipt system to limit saw the program as a step toward addressing the the practice. The clerks in the registry had to petty corruption that infected service provision in provide each citizen with a receipt indicating the Punjab—then home to almost 95 million people, taxes the citizen paid to the registration office, the or roughly half of Pakistan’s population—as well fee the deed writer charged, and the name of the as the rest of the country. In a nationwide survey clerk processing the transaction. Bhatti checked by Transparency International’s Global the receipts for anomalies in the reported Corruption Barometer in 2010, two years after payments to deed writers and the taxes paid in the Bhatti began to innovate, half of all respondents 2 ISS invites readers to share feedback and information on how these case studies are being used: [email protected]. © 2014, Trustees of Princeton University Mohammad Omar Masud Innovations for Successful Societies reported paying bribes for delivery of public district coordination officers across Punjab services during the previous year.2 province that making personal telephone calls to Despite its broad impact on individual citizens was a worthwhile investment in terms of Pakistanis, petty corruption had received little time and expense. Expanding the citizen feedback attention from provincial and national model from one man sitting at his desk with a anticorruption agencies, which instead telephone to a provincial program covering far concentrated on high-profile cases. The National more services and a far larger population Accountability Bureau, established in 2000 to presented serious logistical and technical investigate and prosecute cases of corruption, challenges, few of which Bhatti and Sharif focused on public office holders and sophisticated anticipated at the time. white-collar crime. Although Pakistan’s four Higher-ranking officials in the district federal provinces had their own directorates of administration generally viewed public complaints anticorruption to conduct criminal investigations, as unreliable and often incorrect. The extremely those provincial directorates also targeted major competitive market for civil service jobs in district abuses of public office. facilities such as the property registration office Expanding Bhatti’s citizen feedback model to had turned the complaints system into a tool for other parts of the province enabled the knocking out potential competitors. government to identify corruption and poor Local politicians and other influential performance at the point of service delivery to people—prominent landowners and citizens. businesspeople, for instance—lobbied district coordination officers to appoint their friends and THE CHALLENGE supporters to local positions. Sometimes one side Scaling up Bhatti’s model beyond Jhang would file false complaints to damage the presented multiple challenges. The first was to reputations of rivals. Gulzar Shah, who was find someone to manage the process. Few district- director of anticorruption in Punjab in 2007 level officials in Pakistan remained in their before being district coordination officer in three positions for more than a year, and the constant different districts, described the difficult situation rotation within the civil service raised hurdles to upper management faced. “Even if a DCO thinks long-term planning and implementation. of appointing to any of these offices a person who Bhatti was out of the picture, at least for the he believes enjoys a good reputation, he will soon time being. Even as he experimented with his receive a malicious public complaint from the calling program, he had decided to leave opposite camp accusing the DCO of being biased government. He was a career officer who had and politically motivated,” Shah said. Such joined the Pakistan Administrative Service 15 unfounded and malicious public complaints had years earlier.