JEDDAH, 18 January 2004 — In a wave of facts and figures, Jeddah Mayor Abdullah Al-Muallami presented the successes of Jeddah municipality to delegates at the Jeddah Economic Forum yesterday. With impressive numbers — gross expenditure up from SR544 million to over SR700 million and substantial increases in land grants and services — he described the progress as a “quantum leap in productivity.”
The mayor said the municipal vision for Jeddah was for the city to be efficient and attractive with comprehensive services and sustainable urban development. It was the municipality’s mission, he said, “to deliver municipal services to a perceived level of quality and efficiency.” New administrative structures formed along corporate guidelines had been the basis for two new departments in the city — the General Department for Culture and Tourism and the Department for Environmental Protection.
The mayor listed strategies that the municipality is now using that mirror current thinking inside corporate culture — relocation of the mayor’s office and new signs and badges, management by objectives and “management by wandering around.” These had in fact, he said, helped produce significant results that had had a direct effect on both the municipal staff and the public. “This has restored staff morale and introduced a new team spirit,” he said.
One very positive effect on bureaucracy, according to the mayor, has been to reduce the numbers of documents and procedures needed for granting licenses. This has been considerably reduced — only four documents are required now instead of 12. The number of steps has also been cut from eight to three. The time between application and issue has come down dramatically from 10 days to as little as one. “In some cases, we can do the whole job in a few hours,” said the mayor.
The end user of a city’s services — the citizen or the equivalent of the corporate customer — is important as a source of feedback to the municipality, said Makkah Mayor Dr. Khaled Nahhas. “We have been able to introduce surveys and ask the end-user ‘How are we doing?’ as part of the corporate ‘can do’ culture,” he said.
“The usual answer to municipal and public inefficiency is privatization,” said Abdullah Rehaimi, president of the Presidency for Civil Aviation who described the finer points of government and private sector cooperation in the airline industry. “This often provides some benefits. It is possible for government to improve the delivery of services by taking on board commercial methods.”
The presentations outlined the positive aspects of corporate methodologies but seemed to skate over the controls exercised by customers in the corporate system. Given poor goods or delivery of services, they have a choice and can go elsewhere and therefore put upward pressure on executives to account for their actions or failure to perform.
Asked directly what sanctions or pressures the public could apply to ensure accountable and quality delivery of services and whether in the foreseeable future elections of municipal officials may provide that, neither the moderator of the session nor the mayors responded.
The question was then directed to Abdullah Rehaimi. He considered that the best option was to choose the operating system used by a public body from inside. “Whether it works or not will reflect on us,” he said, “especially if we derive revenues from the market place.”
