SMS JAGA

In Odisha, the Housing & Urban Development Department is taking several innovative and progressive steps to provide citizen-centric services in all the state's urban areas, particularly targeting those belonging to the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) and the citizens residing in the Slum areas. Timely delivery of these services regularly by the ULBs authorities is key to the success of the measures undertaken by the Department. To ensure that the services are delivered on time, it is imperative to develop a system which will help monitor the delivery of the services and enable the administration to have visibility on services/geographies that are not being sufficiently serviced to hold the responsible individuals/departments accountable and monitor the fixing of issues causing the insufficient service delivery. For the administrative leadership to have access to unbiased data the participation of the community and independent agencies in reporting about the services that they are entitled to will be crucial. This also helps raise the confidence of the citizens in the administration. Once the issues of poor service delivery have been recorded from the service recipients’ end, the same should be relayed/communicated to administration and responsible departments to take corrective action. In addition to surfacing the issues and making this information available to the concerned authorities, a mechanism to track, monitor and escalate issues along the chain of command is necessary so there is a closed loop system in place to ensure service delivery issues are fixed.