Ethiopian Public Administration,

Governance and Ethics

Concepts of Public Service Delivery

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 Guiding Questions

• What is 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.

• Why Public service delivery? includes those

activities of government institutions aimed at:
- satisfying the need and wants of citizens,
- ensuring the well being of society, and
- enforcing laws, regulations and directives of the
government. (e.g., police, defense) 4
 Definition of Public Service Delivery …

• Public Service delivery as a system requires

systematic methods whereby activities are arranged
so that the service recipients can get the services they
need in an effective, efficient, transparent and
equitable manner.
• To summarize, public service delivery, in general,
can be defined as follows:
- the government institutions/agencies deliver
services by using different inputs, and carries out
these inputs through a process of transformation to
get the outputs. 5
 Definition of Public Service Delivery …
Inputs Transformation Output
•Finance •Equipment •Treatment
•Time •Knowledge of People •Advice
•Strategy •Systems •Peace of mind
•Processes •Time •Comfort
•Systems •Infrastructure •Security
•Assets •Others •Healthier patient
•Materials •others
•Infrastructure
•
•People
•Training
•Procedures
•Patients
•others

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 Characteristics of Public Service

Public services have unique characteristics that makes

them different from private service, such as:
• They are provided using tax payers money.
• Target a significant proportion of the citizenry (any
citizen does 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, governments do
not often want to let these services to be given by the
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• The out puts of public services are hard to
attribute to specific individual effort. Mostly
they are the results of group efforts.
• The outputs of public services are hard to
measure. B/c public services are
intangibles, they are not something to be
stored, transport, seen, etc. Normally, public
services are observed during processes.

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 -Due to this reason, sometimes it is difficult to
measure the outputs of public services like any
other commodities. This also makes difficult to set
standards to measure public services.

• May attract people with a public service ethos

- 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 your customers
-a customer is someone who purchases or rents something
from an individual or an organization.
-a customer is someone who makes a habit to purchase
goods or services or the ultimate beneficiary of the service
provided.
- customers can be grouped into: Internal Customers:
people working in different departments, branches, etc. with
in an organization. External Customers: Individuals,
business people, groups outside the organization, etc. 10
 Elements of public service Delivery …
-We have to know which category of citizen
we are here to serve? Who are they? Where
they are found? What they need? etc.
-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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 Elements of public service Delivery …
2. Building customer service strategy
- Public institutions, in an effort to provide effective
service, should build effective service strategy that
put the citizen at the centre.
- This means all the planning process, 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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 Elements of public service Delivery …

3. Recruit and manage the right people

- Government institutions should be able to
recruit the right people; and not only recruiting
but they should also be 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 quality.
• 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.
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 Elements of public service Delivery …

• 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.

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 Elements of public service Delivery …

5. Shape policy and practice with customers

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
• The following steps should be followed to
improve the service delivered by public
organizations.
1. Identify customers
2. Need assessment
- After knowing and understanding the customers,
the next step is identifying their needs and
priorities.
3. Baseline
-We have to establish a kind of baseline information
which shows the current service delivery status 18of
 Improving Public Service Delivery…
4. Gap Analysis
-Based on the baseline information, we can
identify the gap. The gap means the areas that
needs public service improvement.
-The gap of an organization 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 or areas of
public service delivery that needs improvement,
we have to establish service standards. 19
 Improving Public Service Delivery…
-Service standards are measureable indicators that
shows the process that we follow in providing
services to our customers.
- It shows the levels and quality of public services
w/c we intend to give to our citizen.
6. Gear up for the service delivery
-We have to take all the necessary preparations to
provide the service as the set standards. E.g.
preparing all the required facilities, give a training
to employees, etc.
• Prepare ourselves to the level of service standards
that we set. 20
 Improving Public Service Delivery…
7. Announce service standards
• Once you have finished all the necessary
preparations, now you have to communicate the
service standards to all the concerned customers.
8. Monitor the service delivered against the
standards
• Assess whether there is any gap between the
service we deliver to the customers and the set
standards.
• If any gap observed, repeat the first step, i.e.,
redefine customers and reassess their needs, & so
on. 21
 4. Citizen-Centered Service Delivery
• In Ethiopia, different researches showed that there
is a significant gap between what the citizen
expect and what they get from public organizations.
• In other words, citizens expect service as good as or
better than the one provided by the private sector.
• Therefore, the question is
- “How can the public sectors improve their services
to cope with expectations?”
- What major factors we need to consider in order to
bring our public services to the desired citizens’
expectations?
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 Citizen-Centered Service Delivery…
• This leads us to the concept of citizen-centered
service delivery.
• Citizen-centered service delivery is simply mean:
- incorporating citizens’ concerns and interests at
every stage of our service design and delivery
process.
- the guiding principles of our public sector
organizations must be citizens’ needs. Citizens’
needs have to become our public organizations
organizing principles.
- We have to think from customers’ perspectives
rather than from our organization’s perspectives.23
 Citizen-Centered Service Delivery…

• So, what measures need to be taken to make

our public service more customer-centered?
• The South Africa’s Batho Pele (Citizen first)
principles can really provide our public
institutions an excellent policy framework in
implementation strategy for citizen-centered
service delivery.

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 Citizen-Centered Service Delivery…
• The following layers are dedicated to describe each
of these principles.
i) Consultation
- Public institutions are there to provide services
to the public and therefore, with regard to the
services, the standards, the levels, the quality of
these services, there must be consultation with
our citizens.
- especially in an effort to identify and set
priority needs and expectations of our citizens,
there must be an involvement of the citizens.
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 Citizen-Centered Service Delivery…
ii) Setting Service standards
-This is to mean setting indicators by which we can
measure the outputs of our services or the
indicators to measure the processes of giving
services to the citizens.
iii) Access
-Because public service is citizen service, all
citizens must have equal access to the public
service. For instance, the disables, those in rural
areas should have to get equal access to all the
government services.
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 Citizen-Centered Service Delivery…
- So, accessibility is an important indicator that shows
our services are really customer-centered or not.
iv) Courtesy
- It is 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:
-Our customers should get full & accurate information
about public services they are entitled to get.
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 Citizen-Centered Service Delivery…

vi) Openness:
-Public service is a service provided by tax payers
money. So, they have the right to see how public
institutions operate, such as the process that
follow, the capital they have investing, so on.
vii) Redress:
- When ever there are unfulfilled promises by
public institutions, the institution should ask
apologize to the customers. Not only this, but
effective key remedies are expected from that
institution. 28
 Citizen-Centered Service Delivery…

viii) Value for money:

-Public service should be given to our citizens
economically and efficiently.
-Public institutions should not only work for
collecting money from the citizens.
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. 29
 Discussion Questions
• Are the Ethiopian public sector
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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 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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 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 32
 The citizen’s charter
• The citizen's charter is a policy
statement about relationship
with customers.
–Customers/Citizens- Rights
–Responsibilities of Citizens

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 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 34
 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
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• To refrain from deceptive, dishonest or
fraudulent conduct
• To refrain from making frivolous or
vexatious 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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