Unit Four: Public Service Delivery and Change Mangement

Concepts of Public Service

Delivery

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 Guiding questions

 What is public service delivery?

 What are the Elements of Public Service Delivery?
 What are the steps to improve public service delivery?
 What is citizen-centered service delivery?

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Contents

1. Definition of Public Service Delivery

2. Elements of Public Service Delivery
3. Improving Public Service Delivery
4. Citizen-Centered Service Delivery

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1. Definition of Public Service Delivery
Public service is
a service provided by the government to
people living within its jurisdiction, either directly
or indirectly.

Public service delivery includes those activities

of government institutions aimed at
satisfying the need and wants of the citizen
ensuring the well being of society,
enforcing laws, regulations and directives of the
government. (e.g., police, defense)

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Definition of Public Service Delivery …
Public Service delivery systems
require systematic method where by activities are
arranged so that
the service recipients can get the services they need in an
effective,
efficient,
transparent and
equitable manner.
To summarize the definition of public service delivery, in general,
the government institutions/agencies deliver
services by using
different inputs, and
carries out these inputs through a process of transformation to get
the outputs.
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Definition of Public Service Delivery …

Inputs Transformation Output

•Finance •Equipment •Treatment
•Time •Knowledge of •Advice
•Strategy People •Peace of mind

•Processes •Systems •Comfort
•Systems •Time •Security
•Assets •Infrastructure •Healthier patient
•Materials •Others •others
•Infrastructure
•People
•Training
•Procedures
•Patients
•others
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Characteristics of Public Service

Public services have unique characteristics that make them different to

private services, such as:
They are provided using tax payers money.
They target a significant proportion of the citizenry (any citizens do
have a right to claim to get the public service).
They are mostly merit goods.
Public services are basic goods.
If these services are not properly provided to the citizen, it may harm the well
being of the society. Therefore, government do not want to let these
services to be given by private sectors.
If private sectors attempts to provide such services, they may not
worked at profit.
This is why public goods are provided at publicly subsidized rate. E.g.
Hospital services.

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Characteristics of Public Service cont’d
The out puts of public services are hard to
attribute to specific individual effort.
 Mostly they are the results of group efforts.
measure.
B/c public services are intangibles, they are not something to be stored,
transport, seen, etc.
 Normally, public services are observed during processes.
Due to this reason, sometimes it is difficult to
measure the outputs of public services like any other commodities.
set standards to measure public services.
It may attract people with a public service ethos (culture)
Since the output of public service is difficult to measure, we need to
assign on the provision of these services people having high level of
professional ethics.

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2. Elements of public service Delivery
To provide effective public service delivery, our public institutions need to
follow certain fundamental principles/elements.
1. Identify and understand our customers
customers can be group in to:
Internal Customers: people working in different departments, branches, etc. with in an
organization.
External Customers: Individuals, business people, groups outside the organization, etc.
We have to know which category of citizen
we are here to serve?
Who are they?
Where they are found?
What they need?
We have to ask them their needs, wants, expectations, and their priority needs.
So, unless we identify them and understand our customers, it is very difficult to take
measures to satisfy their needs.

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2. Elements of public service Delivery cont.
 Why we identify and understand our customers?
i. To get feedback from customers.
 What does customers say about our service delivery?
 What do they need?
 what do they want?
ii. To ask customers need.
So, to ask their need, involving them, consultation with
them is important.
- Ask their need, want and expectations.

iii. To identify customers priority needs.

iv. To manage their expectations/priory needs.

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2. Elements of public service Delivery …

2. Building customer service strategy

Public institutions should build effective service strategy
that put the citizen at the centre.
This means all the planning process and all the delivery process of
the public institutions
must take at the center the expectations and the needs of the citizens.
A customer service strategy consists of
a vision,
an action plan,
an implementation plan and
the measurement of improvement.

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2. Elements of public service Delivery cont.
2. Building customer service strategy cont.
To build customers service strategy, it requires:
establishing a vision for customer service excellence.
Identify target customers (internal and/or external).
Determine what your customer wants.
Create a culture of customer service among the employees. This is what
many public institutions lack.
Communicate service standards and expectations to the employees and
customers.
Recruit and retain the right employee. The recruitment should be merit
based.
Institutions should empower employees. This requires delegation of
power; or decentralization of power.
Develop good communications between the management and
employees; among employees; and the public institutions and other
stakeholders.

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2. Elements of public service Delivery cont.

3. Recruit and manage the right people

Government institutions should able
to recruit the right people; and
not only recruiting but also able to maintain them.
B/c experienced civil servants are very much expensive.
So, we have to recruit the right person on merit base and try to retain
them by providing all the necessary rewards and compensations.

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Elements of public service Delivery …
4. Service standards
We have to set standards to the services that we provide to the citizen.
Standards are measurable indicators or levels that are agreed upon to ensure
that products or services are of the desired level and quality of public services.
Standards may measure the outcome of the service or the process of giving
the service.
Service standards should be communicated to internal and external
customers.
Service standards clearly outline the level and quality of service that our
customers expect from our institution.
Unless we set the standard at which we are ready to provide the services to our
citizens, it is very much difficult again to properly respond to customers expectations.
Service standards help our customers to determine the level of service a customer can
expect.

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Elements of public service Delivery …

5. Shape policy and practice with customers

 Our public institutions should shape or change policies, rules,
regulations or practices with the customers.
 B/c we are here to serve them, so our policies, practices or level of
quality standards need to meet the expectations of our customers.
 So, the involvement of our customers in formulations,
amendments/changes of standards or policies should be there.
Public sector policies and practices should be developed through consultation
with
community and stakeholder groups.
the expertise and opinion from customers.
commercial enterprises.
Non-for-profit institutions

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Discussion Question

Discuss the problems and drawbacks of the Ethiopian

public institutions in delivering services to citizens .

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3. Improving Public Service Delivery

 Steps to improve the Publics ervice delivered

1. Identify customers
2. Customers Need assessment
3. Establish baseline information to show the current service
delivery status
4. Gap Analysis: The gap could be analyzed by comparing our
customers needs and the status of our current service
delivery.
5. Set standards: As the results of the gap analysis establish
service standards.
6. Gear up (Prepare public organizations) for the service delivery:
 preparing all the required facilities, give a training to employees, etc.
 Prepare ours elves (sprites) to the level of service standards that we set.
7. Announce service standards: to communicate the service
standards to all the concerned customers.
8. Monitor the service delivered against the standards : If any
gap observed, repeat the first step, i.e., redefine customers
and reassess their needs.
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4. Citizen-Centered Service Delivery
 In Ethiopia, different researches show that there is
a significant gap between what the citizen expect
and what they get from public organizations.
 Therefore, the question is

 “How can the public sectors improve their

services to cope with expectations?”
What major factors that we need to considered in
order to bring our public services to the desired
citizens’ expectations?
This lead us to the concept of citizen-centered
service delivery.

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Citizen-Centered Service Delivery…

 Citizen-centered service delivery is

 incorporating citizens’ concerns and interests at every
stages of our service design and delivery process.
 the guiding principles of our public sectors must be our
citizen needs (customers’ perspectives ).Our citizens needs
become our public organizations organizing principles.
So, what measures need to be taken to make our public
service more customer-centered than public organization-
centered ?
The South Africa’s Batho Pele (Citizen first) principle can
really provide our public institutions an excellent policy
framework in implementation strategy for citizen-centered
delivery.

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Citizen-Centered Service Delivery…
 The following layers are dedicated to describe each of the Citizen
first principles.
i) Consultation: Public institutions need to consult citizens regarding
 the services,
 the standards,
 the levels,
 the quality of these services.
ii. Setting Service standards: setting indicators to measure the
outputs of services or the processes of giving services to the
citizens.
iii. Access: all citizens must have equal access to the public service.
So, accessibility is an important indicator that shows our services
is really customer-centered or not.
iv. Courtesy : giving public services to the citizen in good manner.
- All the necessary respect are expected from our civil servants while
they are providing services to the customers .
V. Information: customers should get full & accurate information about
public services they are entitled to get.

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Citizen-Centered Service Delivery…
vi) Openness: tax payers have the right to see how public
institutions operate, such as the process that follow, the
capital they have investing, so on.
vii) Redress: for unfulfilled promises, the public institutions
should ask apologize to the customers. Not only this, but
effective key remedies are expected from that institutions.
viii) Value for money: Public service should be provided
economically and efficiently.
ix) Transparency: Public institutions should be open while
they are providing services .
Therefore, all the citizens can get access to information about
what, why, how public institutions are providing such
services.

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Public service delivery….
Five–Drivers of Service Delivery Improvement
 In order of importance, the five drivers set by Citizens’ First

are:
Timeliness
Knowledge, competence of staff
Courtesy, comfort
Fairness
Outcome

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Discussion Question
 Are the Ethiopian public organizations giving
a focus for Citizen-Centered Service Delivery?
 Evaluate the service delivered by the

Ethiopian public organizations as per the

South Africa’s Batho Pele (Citizen first)
principles.

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Measuring customer satisfaction

 The internal and external variables of the service delivery

process that should be measured are:
Client expectations
Perceptions of service experience
Level of importance
Level of satisfaction
Priorities for improvement

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The citizen’s charter
 The citizen's charter is a policy statement about relationship with
customers. It deals with citizens’ rights and responsibilities
A. Customers/Citizens- Rights
 Right of Ethical Conduct
 The right to obtain access to personal information
 The right to obtain access to official information
 The right to obtain reasons for official decisions
 The right to procedural fairness
 The right of protected disclosure of official wrongdoing

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 The citizen’s charter…
B. Responsibilities of Citizens
 To comply with the law
 To comply with the reasonable procedural requirements of the
body
 To provide reasonable proof of their identity
 To provide reasonable proof of any claim, entitlement, or
complaint which they seek to have recognized by a body
 To refrain from encouraging a civil servant or public official to
act corruptly or unlawfully
 To refrain from deceptive, dishonest or fraudulent conduct
 To refrain from making frivolous or annoying complaints
 To report as a Public Interest Disclosure
 To give an honest account at all times of their official dealings
with civil servant, public official, or public body

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