Quality Council eyes PSU business

Quality Council of India, the central agency for quality control in the country, is in the final stages of developing benchmark index for various public services.

It is aimed at changing the style of operations of public service organisations which have a high degree of public interaction.

QCI will act as an implementing agency once the benchmark index for public services is ready.

It is planning to work on a carrot and stick principle in line with similar project implemented in United Kingdom few years back.

The secretary general of Quality Council of India, Girdhar J Gyani, told Business Standard it is now customising the software for various public services that originally developed for the project by TCS.

He was in Kolkata to participate in a national seminar on globalisation of standards and testing of explosion protected electrical equipment, organised by Society for Mining Research.

"The requirements or the way of work of various department is different, so customising software is needed," he said.

According to Gyani, a similar scheme in UK is directly monitored by the prime ministers office there.

QCI is working on developing benchmark index in the field of education, healthcare and public services like railways, police, income tax, sales tax, municipalities and PDS.

"QCI has started customising the benchmark index for railways, police and PDS in the first phase. Later on it will work on other services. QCI has already set up a subcommittee for the scheme headed by former vigilance commissioner N Vittal," he said.

QCI has selected four broad based benchmarks for the scheme.

These are transparency, utilisation of resources, leadership component and feedback of client or public in this case. There will be points in each category and a system of evaluation.

The department or municipality or hospital scoring high marks in the benchmark index will get incentives.

"To build a quality nation we should have strict quality mechanism in these sectors," he added.