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.