Sevottam Framework

The Sevottam was designed by DARPG in 2006 as an assessment improvement framework for public service delivery. The Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions has taken steps to register Compliant Citizen’s Charter and Grievance Redress Mechanism.

What is Sevottam?

Sevottam literally is the combination of Hindi words ‘SEWA + UTTAM’, meaning uttam sewa i.e. excellence in services. It has basically three components

• Citizen Charter
• Public Grievance Redress Mechanism
• Service Delivery Capability.

The 2nd ARC in its 12th Report “Citizen Centric administration” has recommended that Union and State Governments should make SEVOTTAM mandatory for all organizations having public interface.

Objectives of Sevottam

It aims to provide an assessment improvement framework to bring excellence in public service delivery. The model works as an evaluation mechanism to assess the quality of internal processes and their impact on the quality of service delivery.

Steps involved in Service delivery

• Define all services which a department provides and identify clients
• Set standards and norms for each service
• Develop capability to meet the set standards
• Perform to achieve the standard
• Monitor performance against the set standards
• Evaluate the impact through an independent mechanism
• Continuous improvement based on monitoring and evaluation results.

Seven Steps to Sevottam Compliant Grievance Redress System

• Well established system of receipt of grievances
• Convenient for all users and its wide publicity
• Timely acknowledgement
• Time norm for redress
• Communication of action taken on redress
• Platform for Appeal
• Analysis of grievance prone areas for making systemic improvements

An organization which meets Indian Standard 15700:2005 will be entitled for “Sevottam” certification, “Sevottam” being the Indian name for excellence in service delivery.

IS 15007:2005

After implementing Sevottam across the country, DARPG demanded Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) to create a standard that addresses the concerns of service delivery by government organizations. By doing that, India has become the first country to have a published standard for Public Service Delivery.

To fulfil the requirements of Quality Management System Sevottam, an Indian Standard  15700:2005 was created for certifying organizations. The IS 15700:2005 has certain citizen centric features such as the Citizen‟s Charter, Grievance Redress Mechanism, and nomination of an Ombudsman etc.

Elements of IS 15700:2005

The Indian Standard on Service Quality by Public Service Organization focuses mainly on the following 3 key elements:

• Formulation of a realistic Citizen‘s Charter through a consultative process.
• Identification of services rendered, Service delivery processes, their control and delivery requirements.
• An effective process for complaint handling.

The DARPG has developed this model for benchmarking Excellence in Public Service Delivery and it provides the frame work to organizations to assess and improve the quality of service delivery for the citizens.