Volume 18, Number 1 Article by N Ravichandran and Doorva Bahuguna March, 2006
Rule Bound Government Agency to Customer Centric Service Facility: Can Indian Passport Offices Make the Leap? :
Every Indian citizen who requires to travel outside the country needs a passport which establishes his/her identity. Issued by the Ministry of External Affairs through the regional passport office (RPO), a fresh passport, if all documents are in order, should be obtainable in five weeks and an existing one renewed in a week. However, the actual process is longer and more complex.
Once the passport application form is received, it is processed by the RPO and sent to the police authorities, who generate a Police Verification Screening Report (PVSR) after verifying the details of the applicant. N Ravichandran and Doorva Bahuguna document the existing systems, procedures and performance of RPOs in India. Focusing on the systems and operations of the RPO, Ahmedabad, they set out to discover why the processing of a passport application form that should normally take 37 minutes (excluding the PVSR) now takes 147 days. Based on their study, they suggest modifications that would improve the response time. The suggestions relate to facilities, process, procedures, resource allocation, manpower deployment, performance measures, technology usage, elimination of non value added activities and change in the managerial approach and orientation. In order to facilitate the implementation of these changes, the suggestions are grouped into four broad categories. The bottleneck operation in terms of time taken is the writing operation. A significant improvement in response time is possible by reallocation of work, staff motivation, education and training and better queue management procedure. The real benefit in terms of turnaround time would result from aligning the PVSR process. The authors hope that their framework will help this important civil service function transform itself from a rule bound procedure oriented culture to a customer centric, operationally efficient world class service quality organisation.
Reprint No 06105