The Prime Ministers, Dr Moeketsi Majoro on Friday launched the Citizen Feedback Mechanism (CFM) and the National Contact Centre at the Ministry of Transport at Ha-Foso in the Berea district.
The purpose of this mechanism is to create a platform for communicating matters of service delivery by the public service between the government and the public.
Giving his remarks, Dr Majoro said he is honored to be launching this mechanism, which is intended to monitor public feedback on service delivery in various government ministries.
He said the Citizen Feedback Management project among other objectives is aimed at analyzing the public sector performance by utilizing data through information technology, noting that feedback will be collected from end-users and be analyzed to identify problematic areas.
He said it is high time the government takes action where they have wronged the public in various government ministries when delivering the services.
Dr Majoro said they conducted research on the Ministries of Health and of Transport where this initiative will resume.
He therefore urged Basotho to work hand in hand with the government for this project to be a success, adding that it is the government’s responsibility to work hard to improve service delivery.
Also speaking, the World Bank Country Representative, Mr. Yoichiro Ishihara said he has been waiting for this moment, saying in 2018 when the initiative started, the government of Lesotho requested support from that World bank.
He added that the mechanism has the potential to improve service delivery, adding that it a tool that is intended to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of public service delivery.
Mr. Ishihara said the pilot study has been conducted on the Ministries of Transport and Health, saying they have established two projects in the Ministry of health thus; TB and COVID-19 in which he said they are awaiting to get feedback from the beneficiaries.
On the same token, Public Sector Modernization Project Coordinator, Mr. Tsolo Maoeng said it is their pleasure to have been part of the conceptualization of the Citizen Feedback Mechanism, its design and eventual pilot.
He added that it is even more gratifying to witness the launch of the same system as it is an integral component of the broader governance accountability cycle.
Mr. Maoeng mentioned that this pioneering system is complementary to the objectives of modernizing the public service and ushering in data-driven decision-making model where organizational decisions are based on actual data analysis results rather than intuition or observation.
He applauded the government, particularly, the Prime Minster’s office for seeing the importance of pursuing not only this meaningful system in the implementation of the reforms.
He therefore thanked the World Bank which he said has been key in providing both technical support and financial resources to make the government of Lesotho’s intentions of building this platform a reality.
In concluding, he urged the government and stakeholders in this regard to take full ownership of this platform and take leverage of resulting analysis for data-driven decision making.
Citizen Feedback Mechanism establishes open lines of communication between the service provision layers and direct beneficiaries of public services directly to understand their experience of accessing public services.
The model focuses on a systems approach to identify trends and patterns instead of individual cases and highlight information to management at a granular level that can allow informed decisions to be taken and implemented.