Winners & Finalists

To learn more about these projects and others submitted to the CAPAM International Innovations Awards Programme, you may request a copy of the submission from the Practice Knowledge Centre.

Gold

Education Guarantee Scheme, Rajiv Gandhi Shiksha Mission, State of Madhya Pradesh (India)

Under the Education Guarantee Scheme (EGS), wherever there is a demand in the 6-14 years age group from 25 children in a tribal area or 40 in a non-tribal one which does not have a schooling facility within one kilometre (which is the norm), the government guarantees to provide within 90 days a trained teacher, teaching-learning material and contingencies to start a primary school. The community is expected to arrange for local space for conducting teaching-learning.

The Scheme was put into operation on 1 January, 1997, and within one year over 16,089 schools have been created, averaging over 40 new schools each day of the year. It has resulted in enrolling nearly 500,000 children. The overwhelming response to the scheme showed the considerable demand that existed for primary education in the community and it has become a model for quickly reaching primary education in similar educationally backward states.

Ontario Delivers - Improving the Delivery of Quality Public Service in Ontario (Canada)

In 1995, Ontario faced the challenges many other jurisdictions were dealing with, such as shrinking resources coupled with increasing customer demands. As a result, the government proposed an agenda to reduce red tape, provide better service to the public, restore customer confidence and get the economy out of a recession by creating new ways to deliver quality customer service. By being customer-centred, changing the ideology of government from "inside-out" to "outside-in", and harnessing technology to increase efficiencies in government, costs have been reduced, while meeting the expectations and demands of an increasingly technologically sophisticated public.

Our service delivery has changed from paper to electronic service delivery, a "One-Window" approach, attributed by speed, simplicity and borderless transactions. Four cornerstones serve as examples of Ontario’s approach to a customer-centred government:

1. Service Ontario - Ontario’s "One-Window" to individuals
2. Ontario Business Connects - Ontario’s "One-Window" to Business Services
3. Teranet - Ontario’s "One-Window" to Land Services
4. Personal Property Security Branch - Ontario’s direct path to electronic financial services

Silver

New Pension Delivery Systems (South Africa)

The Free State Department of Social Welfare is responsible for the delivery of a variety of social security programmes in the Free State. Social security is the Provincial Government’s most important and critical programme to support the poor and vulnerable, especially impoverished households.

The previous system took 3 - 6 months to finalise an application for a pension, using the old paper-driven manual system. Only the central database at the National Department was computerised and linked to the Provincial Head Office. This meant that all inquiries about pension matters had to be referred to the Provincial Head Office, causing delays and much frustration. Other problems included paying up to 10% of their pension to be transported to pay points and the loss of millions of RANDS due to armed robberies, fraud and corruption.

Secondly, a system was developed that facilitated the capturing of applications on regional computers or on transportable laptop computers.

This new system has enabled the Department of Social Welfare to reduce the present period of three months required to process applications down to as little as two weeks, thereby dramatically improving the services provided to pensioners.

The new systems hold a number of benefits:

• The processing of pension applications will be speeded up dramatically removing service backlogs.
• Beneficiaries will be able to withdraw their pensions on any day and at any point in the Free State and will no longer be restricted to a specific date and venue.
• Improved security measures at paypoints which will result in a safer environment for the entire community.
• A reduction in the level of fraud and corruption in social security resulting in substantial financial savings.
• No further losses due to armed robberies.

A Matter of Life & Death - Victoria’s Civic Compliance Solution (Australia)

After many years of road toll reduction through the eighties, the number of deaths on Victoria’s roads was trending upwards indicating that drastic action was required to change the cultural attitudes of an entire community towards driver behaviour.

Through the joint development of common goals, The Victoria Police Force, the Transport Accident Commission and VicRoads - supported by the Department of Justice - has produced an integrated system that has revolutionised road safety and courts management. There was a ‘declaration of war’ against unnecessary death and destruction on the roads. Victoria introduced safety strategies and programmes; enhanced detection; and provided better data to the courts and sheriff to speed up hearings and receive payments. The Victoria Solution has captured the interest of road safety practitioners and courts administration around the world and is being exported to meet international demand.

The Victoria Solution has received the wholehearted support of a previously cynical community. The system is hard, relentless and effective - it works. Victorians now take pride in what they have achieved.

Bronze

Village Pay Phone - Grameen Telecom (Bangladesh)

Village Pay Phone (VPP) is a project of Grameen Telecom (GTC) to provide telecommunication services in rural Bangladesh. VPP will ensure universal access to telephones in the villages.

They have provided to date 70 Village Pay Phones. It is expected that by March ‘98, 500 connections will be given in the villages by GTC. An analysis shows that in the month of January, 1998, on average, each phone generated 285 minutes of outgoing calls and 431 minutes of incoming calls. The total traffic, 716 minutes from a village phone, where no phones were available a few months back is quite high. The maximum traffic generated was 2397 minutes.

The data indicates that there was a large latent demand of telephones in the villages. General inhabitants welcomed the new technology that, they think, would make their life more easier and secure. The phones also provide links to fire services, hospitals and police stations.

Canada’s SchoolNet: Learning without Boundaries (Canada)

The mandate of the SchoolNet program is to move Canada’s 20,000 schools and libraries to 100% connectivity by the end of the school year 1998-99, thus making Canada one of the first countries to connect all its schools and libraries. Since the total expenditures needed is 50 times more than the funding allocated, the strategy adopted was to create powerful on-line learning services that would pull schools and libraries on-line. More importantly, strong partnerships with all stakeholders were established to support all aspects of the program. SchoolNet acts as an enabler and works in partnership with provincial and territorial governments, the education community and the private sector to support the connectivity of schools, the development of on-line educational resources and training models and to foster research on how best to integrate new technologies into the learning process.

Finalists

Centrelink - Linking Australian Government Services (Australia)

This reform separated policy from service delivery and created Centrelink as the "one-stop-shop" which integrates customer access to government services.

Centrelink is responsible for the largest and perhaps most socially sensitive government service operations in Australia. It delivers income support and employment and other services to over 5 million customers. Centrelink delivers services to the value of $40 billion, or around 30 percent of total Commonwealth outlays. It has some 400 service centres across Australia (including 22 Call Centres) that reach out to the most remote areas of the country. It also has special services for indigenous people and those from a migrant background. For many individuals, contact with Centrelink is their most frequent and direct interaction with government.

The Service Delivery Network (Canada)

Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) redesigned their local delivery structure based on a "hub and spoke" arrangement. By the end of 1998, HRDC will have consolidated services based on 100 main Human Resource Centres of Canada (HRCC), including administrative and back office functions. Another 208 satellite offices report to these HRCCs, offering the core services that the public expects. This structure ensures that 90% of Canadians can get in-person service within a 30 minute drive of the ir home.

The Service Delivery Network is more than a change to bricks and mortar. It brought in a fundamental shift in organisational culture. Each of the 100 main HRCCs is headed by an executive-level manager who reflects a new leadership profile. Each has the flexibility to design a local structure and partnerships that best service his/her local labour market. Each is managing by clearly defined and reported measures.

The goal of the Service Delivery Network was to offer at least as much client service, if not more, with fewer resources. It has been a proven success. For example:

• 90% of Employment Insurance (EI) claimants are now paid within four weeks, up from 77% in 1995.
• 99% of callers to their Insurance Telecentres get through, up from 83% in 1995 and 95% of callers to their public pension telecenters are served every day.
• 90% of EI appeals are now heard within 30 days, up from 80% in 1995.

This has inverted the traditional organizational pyramid and flattened the organization.

Education Administrative Services over the Internet (Singapore)

The Ministry of Education (MOE), Singapore, has a virtual one-stop "counter" over the Internet that provides education administrative services for students. Four types of services are offered:

• registration for GCE ‘Ordinary’, ‘Normal’ and ‘Advanced’ level examinations (private candidates)
• release of GCE ‘O’ and ‘A’ level examination results (for private candidates)
• application for admission to post-secondary to 14 Junior Colleges (JCs), 2 Centralised Institutes (CIs), 4 Polytechnics and 5 Institutes of Technical Education(ITEs) for over 90 courses (all eligible students)
• release of posting results for application for admission to post-secondary institutions.

The impetus was the constant striving to provide a better level of service to students. The challenge to serve a large number of students all over the country, in a very short time saw a need to centralise information from the various educational institutions for students to make a more informed choice and to transact services at a time and place of their convenience, and to disseminate information at a faster rate. Some foreign students from U.S.A., Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Australia applied through the Internet without making a trip to Singapore. The high level of usage is testimony of the benefits of the innovation to customers.

The Armed Forces Personnel Administration Agency - (United Kingdom)

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) has outsourced its military personnel administration functions under a 12-year private finance partnership. A commercial company now owns and operates the present single-Service systems, and is contracted to develop a new tri-Service system. Improved services will result, and cost savings of 30% compared with the conventional in-house approach.