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Bangladesh has set up an ambitious target of attaining middle-income status by 2021. To achieve this objective, the economy needs to grow at a sustained rate of 7.5-8 percent annually and this would in turn require an increase in private investment to at least 26.6 percent of GDP from 22 percent in 2016-17. Despite the fact that the government has implemented several policy reforms since 2008, investors still face a number of challenges in establishing and operating a business in Bangladesh. This is reflected in the World Bank Group's Doing Business report, which finds that Bangladesh ranks 177th amongst 190 countries, making it one of the lowest-ranked economies in the South Asia region. Businesses seeking to operate in Bangladesh have to cope with multiple approvals from several institutions and agencies. A potential private investor has to navigate more than 150 government services to obtain the necessary approvals to start and operate a business in Bangladesh. The processes are regulated by over 36 agencies such as the Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA), Office of the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies and Firms (RJSC) and the Department of Environment (DoE), with little inter-agency coordination. Navigating the uncoordinated, non-transparent and cumbersome workings of the agencies imposes a high cost on domestic and foreign investors. In addition, the uncertainty and unpredictability of service delivery hampers business activities and operational planning. These challenges affect Bangladesh's competitiveness and reputation as an investment destination.

The effectiveness of public service delivery depends in large part on the capability, resources and inputs, and the motivation of frontline service providers at the local level. In Nepal a combination of de-concentrated line agencies and local bodies at the district, municipal, and village level provides inputs which are translated into delivery of service outputs and outcomes. Yet the relationships between line agencies and local bodies in service delivery are not well understood. The purpose of this report is to examine in detail the current dynamics of frontline service delivery to identify institutional limitations and present approaches to addressing them. This study seeks to map out the dynamics of service delivery at the local level through analysis of the institutional framework and actual practices in service delivery in 14 jurisdictions in the two districts of Dhankuta and Dhanusa. The study includes a detailed review of the provision of local roads networks and primary and lower secondary education. In this context, the report is divided into four parts: part one gives introduction; part two presents institutional framework for local service delivery; part three focuses on sub-national service delivery: local roads and primary education; and part four presents conclusions and recommendations to improve frontline service delivery.

The Service Delivery Indicators (SDIs) provides a set of key indicators serving as a benchmark for service delivery performance in the health and education sectors in Sub-Saharan Africa. The overarching objective of the SDIs is to ascertain the quality of service delivery in primary education and basic health services. This would in turn enable governments and service providers alike to identify gaps and bottlenecks, as well as track progress over time, and across countries. The SDI survey interviewed 403 heath providers across Tanzania between May 2014 and July 2014. This technical report presents the findings from the implementation of the SDI in the health sector in Tanzania in 2014. Survey implementation activities took place following extensive consultations with the government and key stakeholders on survey design, sampling, and adaptation of survey instruments. A major challenge for Tanzania's health sector is the shortage of skilled human resources for health (HRH). This survey found that provider knowledge and abilities were not adequate to deliver quality services. Caseload per provider and absenteeism are relatively low, so the issue is not over burdened providers. There seems to be ample room for a significant increase in the caseload of Tanzanian providers, i.e. the level of productivity in health service delivery, without jeopardizing quality. In addition to increasing the volume of skilled HRH to address the shortage of providers, improvements in management, supervision and training is important to improving service delivery. Health for all in Tanzania will mean the simultaneous availability of widely accessible inputs and skilled providers.

The Service Delivery Indicators (SDI) provide a set of metrics for benchmarking service delivery performance in education and health. The overall objective of the indicators is to gauge the quality of service delivery in primary education and basic health services. The indicators enable the identification of gaps and tracking of progress over time and across countries. It is envisaged that the broad availability, high public awareness and a persistent focus on the indicators will mobilize policymakers, citizens, service providers, donors and other stakeholders for action to improve the quality of services and ultimately to improve development outcomes and social welfare. This report presents the findings from the implementation of the Service Delivery Indicators in the Education sector in Tanzania in 2014. Survey implementation was preceded by an extensive consultation with Government and key stakeholders on survey design, sampling, and adaptation of survey instruments. Pre-testing of the survey instruments, enumerator training, and fieldwork took place in 2014. In conclusion, comparing the 2010 and 2014 SDI surveys, one clearly notices that Tanzania has made substantial progress in some areas, but there are still remaining gaps. Also, the achieved progress is from a very low base and there is still quite a bit of room for the Tanzanian education system to deliver quality to its pupils and get them prepared and equipped to face competition in the national, regional, and international labor markets.

This article reviews the literature on the politics of bureaucracy in the developing world, with a focus on service delivery and bureaucratic performance. We survey classic topics and themes such as the developmental state, principal–agent relations, and the efficient grease hypothesis, and we link them to new research findings in political science, sociology, and economics. We identify the concept of embeddedness as an important yet still underexplored framework that cuts across disciplines and may be used to understand bureaucratic performance and service delivery. Looking forward, we outline a framework for conceptualizing bureaucratic action by exploiting variation across time, space, task, and client, and we identify promising areas for further research on the bureaucrat–citizen encounter in developing countries.

A number of probation services have recently been considering the closure of outlying offices with a view to centralising into larger multi purpose offices. Anita Gibbs puts the case against this trend, arguing that it will lead to deteriorating working conditions and an unacceptable reduction in the quality of service to probation clients.

Audit, accountability and clinical performance all form what is now understood in the National Health Service (NHS) as Clinical Governance (CG) and it has profound implications for all who work in the NHS including Chaplains. CG is something they will need to comprehend and implement. This paper seeks to describe the service the Chaplaincy provides, our customers are identified, as are the difficulties of assessing whether or not we can/are delivering a quality service. I consider what criteria/performance indicators I would be looking for from an economical, efficient and effective Chaplaincy department. Then as a "customer facing organisation", I explain some of the difficulties of finding out what our customers think of our service/role and cite examples of surveys from other Trusts.