## **Box 1  International Experiences with Citizen Report Cards**

Citizen report cards are being used to rate the performance of public agencies in several countries, including Canada, Denmark, Ghana, India, Sweden, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The preparation and use of the report card can be led by a civil society organization, government service provider agency, or a government coordinating agency possibly in collaboration with an independent civil society organization.

In some countries, the initiative for preparing the report card comes from a civil society organization, often a policy research institute. A primary example of this is the Public Affairs Center in Bangalore, Karnataka State, India. The advantage of this model is that it is independent of government, so it enjoys greater credibility. On the other hand, its links with service providers and public coordinating agencies are tenuous. Service providers may resist the results and/or even undermine the findings. Moreover, the report card may not be sustainable in the medium and long term: regular funding for it is uncertain, and the rigorous technical requirements may be burdensome for some civil society organizations.

In other countries, a government service provider takes the initiative for the report card. The agency contracts out the actual survey and the preparation of the draft report to a private sector group or civil society organization. The draft report is vetted by the agency, finalized, and sometimes disseminated to the public. The focus of the report card may be confined to a single program or service, or a facet relevant to a program. Examples of countries using this model include Canada and the United Kingdom. A major strength of this model is the ownership of the exercise by the public service provider, while preparation of the report card by an outside firm brings some degree of independence to the exercise. On the other hand, for the same reason, the objectivity of the findings may be questioned by the public at large.

In yet other countries, a government coordinating agency engages an independent organization to design and prepare the report card. This work is done in consultation with—but independent of—the public service agencies. The experience in the United States is instructive in this context. The Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 forces the executive branch to report to Congress on the performance of government agencies. The General Services Administration, a government coordination agency, is charged with assessing the performance of federal agencies.

Among the three models discussed above, the third model is the most comprehensive in terms of the product and process. Legislation sets the mandate and confirms resources for the report card. An independent and credible consortium of institutions is established to prepare it. A well established methodology is used to assess the performance of federal agencies.

# **_1.2 Citizen Scorecard Survey in Five Cities – Results_**

**_Analyzing the responses given by the surveyed citizens in five Chinese cities, this section explores the areas of citizens’ satisfaction and dissatisfaction, and issues of equity and quality of public services._** With respect to equity, the survey echoed the findings of other studies China in implying that the funding and structures in the education system and especially healthcare system generally exacerbated rather than narrowed income inequalities among population groups.  Earlier studies have pointed out particularly the rural-urban divide in access to quality public services.  This study illustrates that public services have not played an equalizing role within cities.  With respect to the quality of services, the survey revealed that citizens, in fact, had little information that would enable them to reliably assess the quality of services received.  Moreover, although citizens admitted to commonly complain informally, they generally expressed unwillingness to complain formally and actively seek improvement in public service delivery.

**_Table 1 captures selected results of a cross-city comparison in public service delivery performance based on the citizen score card survey and analysis_** .  A citizen scorecard

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