The adoption of the citizens charter policy in public service delivery in Ghana a tool for social accountability or a mere administrative rhetoric

Abstract

The need for an improved public sector with bureaucrats to provide efficient services to the citizens, informed the adoption of the citizens charter policies in Ghana in October, 2007. The policy aimed at reinventing public service delivery in the country. Since its inception, numerous studies have been conducted to establish its implementation successes and failures in the health sector. However, the extant literature has little empirical findings on its impacts on the services of other public agencies. This current study sought to fill the gap by investigating the impact of the citizens charter programme on social accountability in terms of voice, answerability and enforceability in the service delivery of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) and the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA). The study was premised on the pragmatists research paradigm, using the concurrent mixed-method design to collect both quantitative and qualitative data from 219 sampled respondents and 10 expert informants respectively. The study established that the introduction of the citizens charter programme has had minimal impact on social accountability in the public service agencies. This was expounded with the assertion that the voice of the clients/citizens have been systematically curtailed through the limited level of involvement granted them during the crafting, implementation and evaluation of the service charters. The study again revealed that, the citizens charter programme currently has no legislative backings in Ghana, neither is there any government initiative towards institutionalising the programme in the public service agencies. Nonetheless, the citizens charter programme has improved upon the standards of service delivery and citizens’ access to information. The study thereby concludes that the citizens charter programme in its current implementation state, is more of an administrative rhetoric than serving as a mechanism to make service providers responsive and accountable to the citizens. The findings contribute to knowledge in the extant literature on public sector reforms implementation. Since the enforceability of the citizens charter programme was found to be poor, the study recommends that the Public Sector Reform Secretariat under the Office of the President should draft a ‘Citizents Charter Bill’ to be passed by the parliament to give it a legal backing. Again, the Office of the Head of Civil Service in collaboration with the Public Service Commission should institute a ‘Charter Mark System’ to help rate public service agencies on their adherence to the tenets of the citizens charter programme.