Authorities of the central province of Quang Binh on October 5 received over 17,900 USD from the UK’s non-governmental organisation Oxfam to undertake a public service assessment project.

The M-Score project, initiated by Quang Binh authorities and Oxfam, is meant to collect public feedback through a mobile phone scorecard to measure the quality of public administration services and the performance of public officials in serving citizens.

With the project, the province hopes to improve public services at the grassroots level, increase equal access to public services among vulnerable groups including ethnic minorities and women, enhance the transparency and accountability of administration offices and create a tool to score publically-elected units and leaders of administration agencies.

From 2013-2014, Quang Binh topped the country in provincial governance and public administration performance indexes conducted by the Vietnam Fatherland Front’s Centre for Research and Training, the Centre for Community Support Development Studies and the United Nations Development Programme.

The province finished first with top rankings in five of the six dimensions including transparency, accountability, corruption control in the public sector, public administrative procedures and public service delivery.-VNA