A government endeavors continuously to improve the quality of public services for its citizen by taking various measures. And such an endeavour, which is worth mentioning is the introduction and application of 'kaizen' approach, which aims at continuous improvement through small initiatives. It is a Japan-Bangladesh joint project and is followed in 25 nation-building departments (NBD) at 492 sub-districts of 64 districts covering the entire country.

‘Kai’ means ‘change’ and ‘zen’ means ‘better’.The government’s Ministry of Public Administration has been spreading this concept with Japan’s development arm JICA’s (Japan International Cooperation Agency) support to enhance public services.

As many as 10,244 kaizen initiatives, known as small improvement project (SIP), have been adopted and implemented during 2017-2018. A total of 10,393 lower-level bureaucrats have been trained practically, while 8,676 service providing officials were appraised about the approach.

Motto of kaizen

The key motto of kaizen approach is identification of improvement areas of service delivery and taking four-month execution plan to be implemented with the resources the organization has. 

The SIPs cover key public service points, for example, land office, registration office, education department, social services, youth development, women affairs, family planning, health services, public health engineering, law enforcing agencies, food, local government engineering, cooperatives, agriculture, livestock which are directly linked to the vast majority rural population of the country.

Training to the doorstep 

The process is different than the traditional one as training organisers bring training to the doorstep instead of bringing the participants to the central office. A day-long workshop is conducted at the periphery and the training manager facilitates and encourages thinking real-life problems the officials face during their day-to-day life relating to their office.  In order to solve the problem, they are instructed to prioritize the problems, make a SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound) action plan, and implement them within the stipulated time. The team is comprised of officials of the particular office where the trainer serves as the mentor. After four months, a dissemination seminar is held to discuss how the SIP has been implemented and what the benefits have been found so far.

Public representatives or high officials of the districts are also invited as the guests for formalization of the initiative. A one-page simple format describes the significance of the plan, all activities to perform, necessary team member to exchange information, and Gantt chart, a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule, to monitor the project.

Reasons for success in Bangladesh

The approach claims a successful initiative because of discretion and ownership of bureaucrats and its far-reaching impact. Lower level bureaucrats, who work for general masses, are the key officials who plan according to their interests, level of ability, and resource availability. The credibility of designers, particularly bureaucrats, compels them to take ownership and nourish it for continuation.

The traditional top-down policymaking process ignores the commitment, talent of officials, and policy implementation challenges that are highly valued in this process. Thus, these bureaucrats accept it as their own products.  

Most of the capacity building training progammes are designed to deliver theoretical knowledge that participants can hardly reproduce and apply. Learning kaizen in training boosts participants up as they can easily learn the technique, and identify many areas to apply it. Implementation of the plan requires either no resource or no money or affordable minimum resources.

This is such a simple technique that may not be mandatorily innovative or unique one and not necessarily invented by oneself. This approach allows the reapplication of best practices of public service delivery to increase client satisfaction. It likewise allows taking initiatives to satisfy internal clients of the organisation.

It is worth mentioning that kaizen approach is simple but outputs are numerous, the impact is huge and coverage is wide. Kaizen initiatives cover a wide range of service areas relating to customer service, client satisfaction, process simplification and improvement, improving the working culture. Hanging exact cost of mutation on the wall, meeting general people outside the office, establishing complaint box and mitigating, getting livestock service through mobile, solving agriculture related problems over the phone, receiving a stipend in the mobile account, mitigating long-pending pension cases, facilitating health care for the elderly, marking the road breakers, setting one-stop service, engaging students for common toilet cleanliness and school beautification, ensuring sitting arrangement for visitors at the busiest office places, establishing breastfeeding corners are a few of more than 10000 kaizens undertaken in the country.

These kaizens reduced unnecessary cost; ensured accountability and transparency; minimised visits of clients; lessened corruption and hassle; and increased client satisfaction to a great extent.

A simplified bureaucracy

Usually, bureaucracy is severely criticised because of its sluggish, old-fashioned, time-consuming, and lengthy process of providing services. But through this approach, the process is simplified, thus increasing client satisfaction and creating a friendly environment. Thus, it minimizes the gap between service providers and recipients. Furthermore, it helps develop new administrative culture and simplification of processes that the Bangladesh government is trying to adopt.

Usually training, in most cases, produces no measurable outputs, as there is a paucity of feedback after the training. The kaizen training is designed to have outputs to bring back to the office, even home, and mandatorily translate these into outcome through actions and performance.

The inbuilt monitoring mechanism helps keep them progressing and learning. This is a systematic approach to learning. The kaizen training is designed as a comprehensive training that establishes and nourishes the working culture of improving service delivery. Hence, teamwork is an embedded mechanism, and all managerial positions at the district level are employed as mentors. 

On the other hand, mandatory bindings of the top-down approach sustain the kaizen process as an institutionalised approach.

The Cabinet Division of Bangladesh, the executive office of the Prime Minister, has included kaizen in the annual performance agreement (APA) with the allocation of some weightage. This policy direction of the Cabinet Division and involvement of the Ministry of Public Administration force every grassroots level office to undertake kaizen(s), guide administrative ministries to monitor and engage attached departments to supervise.

Twenty-five kaizen cells have been established and twenty-five kaizen focal-point officers have been appointed in each head office of NBDs to play an active role in sustaining the approach.

Kaizen approach is a simple process, easily adaptable, and implementable that any official organisation can take and implement. Every organisation should take as many as kaizen every year and implement simultaneously or one after another, as there is always room for improvement at every stage.

Big impact through small changes

However, big reform is not possible through it, which can be done through kaikaku - structural reform through a big project. The main philosophy of kaizen is to create a big impact through small changes over and over again. 

It is worth mentioning that Japanese organisations are successful because of the application of hundreds of kaizens every year. After the mandatory option of initiating kaizen as included in APA for public officials in Bangladesh, there is a possibility of transposing with or misinterpreting of other initiatives of the government, for example, innovation, and business process reengineering.

Low-scoring target-setting of APA may also force lower-level bureaucrats to initiate less than their capacity. Furthermore, kaizen is more applicable to normal situations and not during a disaster or pandemic when quick and immediate services are needed.

(The writer is a faculty member at Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre (BPATC). The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at rez@bpatc.org.bd, rezapatc@gmail.com)