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(ADB 2001b). These and other examples suggestthat while an ombudsman or and similar institutionaldevice may be helpful, it is not a panacea.Other legal and institutional reforms may improveaccess to bureaucratic justice by aidingthe efforts of private individuals and organisationsto monitor the bureaucracy. Educating poorcommunities about their rights and means ofredress vis-à-vis the bureaucracy is an importantfirst step in ensuring bureaucratic accountability.Providing legal or quasi-legal assistance is another.Both of these issues are versions of the moregeneral issue of how to provide access to legalinformation and legal services, discussed earlierin this chapter. However, particularly in caseswhere legal service providers support the publicagainst state behaviour, attention must be paid toinstitutional arrangements which protect the independenceof justice services providers, becausesuch services will inevitably be more threateningto the state than, say, health or education.Government agencies can and should take additionalsteps to facilitate monitoring of bureaucraticperformance. For example, bureaucraciesshould employ an accessible case tracking system,which individuals and organisations canuse to monitor the progress of disputes throughthe bureaucratic system. USAID helped developa case tracking system in Bosnia-Herzegovinathat allows civil society organisations to monitorcases at various stages in the administrativeprocess and to draw the attention of responsibleauthorities to cases that have been ignored orseem to be languishing in the system without aresolution (USAID 2006). Another approach thatcan contribute to increased public accountabilityis the introduction of citizen charters, which arepreferably developed in collaboration with thecommunity. Citizen’s charters should containclear standards for performance that are fit to bemeasured and benchmarked by the bureaucracy,independent agencies and the community itself.In this way the public has a yardstick for assessingpublic service delivery. An illustrative bottomup example of the citizenry measuring publicperformance are the efforts of citizens’ groups inBangalore, India — these groups conducted consumersurveys regarding the performance of localgovernment agencies and published the resultsin order to create pressure for reform. This ‘namingand shaming’ approach spread to other statesin India as well (Narayan 2002). Where feasible,modern information technology (e.g. Internet, cellphones, etc.) could be used to disseminate informationon bureaucratic performance more broadly,which would facilitate external monitoring.Structural ReformsAs useful as it may be to improve external monitoringmechanisms, significant progress towardimproving access to bureaucratic justice may requiremore systematic reforms of the bureaucraticinstitutions themselves. A starting point is theimprovement of each agency’s internal adjudicativeprocedures, monitoring mechanisms, appealsprocesses, and grievance procedures. The administrativedispute resolution system and the publicinterventions aimed at facilitating the resolutionof disputes between private parties do not alwaysreceive as much attention from governments andthe donor community as the judicial system, butmore people — and a larger proportion of poorpeople — are more likely to come into contactwith the bureaucratic system than the court system.(This would certainly be true of non-criminalmatters.) Government bureaucracies responsiblefor delivering essential services and for interventionsin relationships between citizens shouldhave a well-functioning system for providingenforcement and mediation services, addressingcomplaints, resolving disputes, and providing50