Kerala CM to receive UN award for public service

Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy will receive the United Nations Global Award for Public Service from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon at a ceremony to be held in Bahrain on Thursday.

Chandy would leave for Bahrain on Thursday morning to receive the award, to be given at the valedictory function of the United Nations Public Service Forum and Awards ceremony, sources at the chief minister's office said.

The UN ceremony is taking place in Bahrain based on the theme ‘Transformative e-government and innovation: Creating a better future for All' from June 24 to 27. This is for the first time that the UN award for public service is being distributed at a venue in a Gulf country.

Chandy was selected for his mass contact programme from among entries from 50 Asia-Pacific countries. The initiative has been widely lauded as a unique democratic experiment in which the chief minister of an Indian state met thousands of people directly without any intermediaries. He received up to 5.5 lakh petitions, of which around 3 lakh were resolved, and distributed financial assistance of Rs 22.68 crore as part of the programme.

Since 2003, UN has been giving the award as part of its programme for Public Service Day, observed on June 23. The awards, instituted through a UN resolution, are announced after a three-tier scrutiny and detailed examination.

The shortlisted candidates are examined by a seven-member sub-committee of UN's committee of experts in public administration.

 Evaluation criteria for the awards include transparency, mechanisms to increase public's ability to seek and receive information in a timely manner and monitoring and analysing government decision-making and processes.

Promotion of accountability and documentation, which can serve as evidence of a government's conformity to legal, procedural and fiscal requirements were among the parameters.