Citizen Feedback piloted at agencies
Anti-corruption and research organisations yesterday launched the Citizen Feedback pilot project to evaluate the transparency of public services via smartphone technology.
The pilot project lets citizens express their views regarding satisfaction and transparency of services provided by government agencies through online questionnaires developed by the private sector based on smartphone technology.
Thailand’s Private Sector Collective Action Coalition against Corruption (CAC), together with the Thailand Marketing Research Society (TMRS), the Anti-Corruption Organization Thailand, and the Hand Social Enterprise, jointly launched the project.
The project plans to establish a platform for the public to express opinions on government services by scanning a QR code located at the agencies they visit. This will link them to a brief online survey that can be completed within two minutes.
Key questions, which will be included in the QR code survey, include service satisfaction, obstacles in using services, work flow or job completion, and public experience of state agency services.
Apart from rating services, respondents can also report their impressions and obstacles as well as bribery and misconduct they may witness when visiting government offices. Respondents can provide their input freely as their identity will not be revealed, while they can also track the survey results.
“This project will demonstrate how feedback from citizens can lead to benchmarking and a material change in the quality of public services,” said Bandid Nijathaworn, CAC secretary-general.
“Upon expansion of our project next year, we hope that information gathered from citizens will lead to constructive and efficient enhancement of public services, and that more efficient and transparent services will effectively mitigate corruption conditions,” Mr Bandid said.
The pilot project will run between Sept 18 and Oct 13 at five sites of three government agencies — the Department of Land Transport’s registration unit; Food and Drug Administration’s licence application centre; Department of Land’s Bangkok Metropolitan Land Office, the Huai Khwang Land Office and the Nonthaburi Land Office.
The Office of Public Sector Development Commission helped recruiting government agencies to participate in the pilot programme.
This projected is initiated by the CAC, which studied tools that other countries used in tackling bribery problems and learnt that one of the effective tools is the creation of a platform that allows citizens to express their opinions toward public services and provide information about bribery demand.
TMRS, which comprises Thailand’s leading market research companies, will compile and analyse the collected data.