Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 19th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview Civil Service Author(s) Adriana Circiumaru National Agency of Civil Servants Bucharest Romania Title Citizen's charter File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract Citizens’ Charter is a document that stands for the systematic efforts and the firmly engagement of public authorities/institutions addressed to citizens/beneficiaries of their specific services for respecting their standards, constantly inform and consult citizens, promote and support non-discriminating principles in delivering services and in offering access to services. Through the Citizens’ Charters public authorities/institutions are setting up proper and efficient mechanisms of answering to requests, applications, notices, petitions, efficient usage of funds, and promotion of ethical principles in public policies and in fighting against any corruption forms. The aim of the Citizens’ Charter project was to increase the role of civil society in promoting good governance and citizens’ participation in the process of designing local public policies. The target-group of this project was represented by 1200 citizens, 30 volunteers and 1000 civil servants from 10 institutions and local public authorities from Cluj, Mehedinţi, Tulcea and Vaslui counties and Bucharest Municipality, that were involved in designing Citizen’s Charters and in establishing a system of awarding the good practices and of engaging citizens in the process of institutional reform and decisional transparency. The volunteer body was formed as an independent entity that comprised representatives of civil society from the 5 locations involved in the project. The volunteers were trained on specific administrative reform laws, focusing on the transparency law and the civil servants statute, basics of an efficient communication, the methodology of elaborating Citizens’ Charters and monitoring procedures. The volunteers applied 1200 questionnaires evaluating the citizens regarding satisfaction on the quality of the services they are provided by the civil servants and as regards their needs. The project also included a training session for civil servants on the methodology and the steps to elaborate a Citizens’ Charter. After being trained, civil servants were able to elaborate the procedures of self-assessment in their own institution and to create the Citizens’ Charter for the institution they work for. Also, they offered support to the volunteers in their activity of questioning the final beneficiary of the public institutions’ services, namely the citizens, they disseminated the Charter through making it public on their web site, on the intranet, displaying it in public places and making it public for the local media. The civil servants also contributed to elaborating the Good Practices Guide. The purpose of the Charter was to increase the degree of involvement of citizens in assuring a quality decision-making process, oriented towards their needs. Therefore, the Charter had two main components: a synthesis of the legislation on the relationship between the citizens and the public local institutions and the legislation regarding the institutions’ services, created on the basis of the results of the consultations with the civil servants and their recommendations for improving the implementation of these regulations based on the volunteers’ report. An assessment committee was constituted in order to evaluate the good practice cases. The Award went to three services or themes which have obtained the statute of the best practices and were included in the Good Practices Guide. The main results of the projects included the elaboration of 14 Citizen’s Charters, cases which were disseminated through the Good Practices Guide.
