public policy session 6 for MA program pdf

College of Leadership and Governance
School of Public Policy Studies
Ethiopian Public Administration, Governance and Ethics
No Class without Mask!!! & reduction of 5 points
Workineh Eshetu

Group Discussion
1. Discuss the concepts and characteristics of public service delivery
2. Explain Citizen-Centered Service Delivery
3. How do you Understand the Big Picture and SERVQUAL?

Concepts of Public Service Delivery
 Public service is service provided by the government to the people
living within its jurisdiction, either directly or indirectly.
 Globally, public sectors are collectively the world’s largest service
provider. It includes:
Satisfying the need/wants of citizen
Ensuring the wellbeing of society
Enforcing laws, regulations and directives
 The delivery of public services is typically a highly complex
undertaking which involves large number of transactions between
service providers and recipients.

 Public service delivery require a systematic method whereby
activities are arranged so that the service recipients can get the
services they need in:
Effective and Efficient
Participatory and Transparent
Accountable and Equitable
Legitimate and integrated manner among others
 The key strategies to improve service delivery are found to be
increasing citizen participation in the affairs of the local authority
and partnership with the community in service delivery among
other things.

Inputs
• Finance and Time
• Strategy and Processes
• Systems and Assets
• Materials and Infrastructure
• People and Training
• Procedures and Patients
• others
Transformation
• Equipment
• Knowledge
• Systems
• Time
• Infrastructure
• Others
Output
• Treatment
• Advice
• Peace of mind
• Comfort
• Security
• Healthier patient
• others
 To summarize the concepts of public service delivery, it is about
the government institutions/agencies deliver services by using
different inputs, and carries out these inputs through a process of
transformation to get the outputs.

Characteristics of Public Service
 Globally, public services have unique characteristics which make
them different. Because:
They are provided using tax payers money
They target a significant proportion of the citizenry
Citizens have the right to claim to get public services
They are mostly merit goods
Public services are basic goods
 If these services are not properly provided to the citizen, it may harm
the wellbeing 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 work
at profit. This is why public goods are provided at publicly subsidized
rate. E.g. Hospital services.

Home Take Exam
 Discuss the common characteristics of services by giving practical
example:
A. Intangibility of Services
B. Inseparability of Services
C. Variability of Services
D. Perishability of Services

 The outputs of public services are hard to attribute to specific
individual effort. Mostly they are the results of group efforts.
 Public services are intangibles, they are not something to be
stored, transport or seen etc. Normally, public services are
observed during processes. Due to this reason, sometimes it is
difficult to:
Measure the outputs of public services
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.

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
Internal Customers = organization community
External Customers = any service user from outside
 Why we identify and understand our customers?
To get required feedback from citizens/customers
To set consultation session with citizens/customers
To identify their priority needs
To manage their expectations etc.

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:
Vision, Mission and Goals
Action Plan/Implementation Plan
Implementation Strategies and Tactics
Measurement of Improvements
Reports and Feedbacks

 To provide effective public service to the intended citizens, public
institutions need to have effective public service strategies that considers
the needs, wants and expectations of customers at the center. To build
customers service strategy, it requires:
Establishing a vision for customer service excellence
Identify target customers (Internal/External)
Determining what customer needs/wants
Create a culture of customer service among the employees
Communicate service standards and expectations
Recruit by merit and retain the right employee
Empower employees through delegation of power
Develop good communications

3. Recruit and Manage the Right People
 Government institutions should be 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.
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/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.
5. Shape Policy and Practice with Customers
 Our public institutions should shape/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 or
changes of standards or policies should be there. Public sector policies
and practices should be developed through consultation with:
Community and stakeholder groups
Expertise and opinion from customers
Commercial enterprises
Non-for-profit institutions

 The 6 Basic Rules of Effective Customer Service
Rule-1: Have a positive attitude
Rule-2: Know your product/service
Rule-3: Listen to citizen/the customer
Rule-4: Maintain communications
Rule-5: Solve the problem
Rule-6: Always follow-up

Discussion Question
 Discuss the problems and drawbacks of the Ethiopian
public institutions in delivering services to citizens.

Improving Public Service Delivery
 Steps to improve the Public service delivered:
Identify customers
Assessment customer needs
Establish baseline information
Analyzing gaps
Setting standards
Gear-up/prepare public organizations for service delivery
Announce service standards
Monitor the service delivered against the standards

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.
 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. Our
citizens need become our public organizations organizing principles.

Citizen-Centred Service incorporates citizens’ concerns at every
stage of the service design and delivery process; that is, citizens’
needs become the organizing principle around which the public
interest is determined and service delivery is planned.

 Integrated outcomes-based policy: Looking at what outcomes are
desired; how the current government offerings achieve that; and the
opportunities to reduce overlap, duplication and address the gaps in the
service offerings available.
 No Wrong Door service delivery: Looking at the design, availability
and alignment of service delivery channels and optimizing the service
delivery in each of them. No Wrong Door makes sure that wherever the
citizen goes, they can get access to all the services they need.
 Intelligent processing: Understanding how to take account of priority,
complexity and risk so that processing applications for services and
benefits are automated where possible and only ask people to do the
things that are truly required.
 Collaborative governments: Understanding the overlap between
departments, governments and non-governmental organizations and
leveraging their collaborative nature to achieve the outcomes that
government desires and citizens need.

 What are the Drives of Citizen Satisfaction with
?

Service Value Chain Management

The New Public Service:
Serving Rather than Steering

 So, what measures need to be taken to make our public service more
customer-centered than public organization-centered? The following
layers are dedicated to describe each of the Citizen first principles.
 Consultation: Public institutions need to consult citizens regarding the
services, the standards, the levels, and the quality of these services.
 Setting Service standards: setting indicators to measure the outputs of
services or the processes of giving services to the citizens.
 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.
 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.

 Information: customers should get full and accurate information about
public services they are entitled to get.
 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.
 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.
 Value for money: Public service should be provided economically and
efficiently.
 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.

Understanding the Big Picture
Listening to Citizens using Multi-Channel Instruments

Service Quality (SERVQUAL) Dimension

In research, you can apply the follow Framework

Main Factor No. Dimension/Question Area
Tangibles 1 Up-to-date equipment
2 Physical facilities are visually appealing
3 Employees well-dressed/neat
4 Appearance of the physical facilities are consistent with the type of
service industry
Reliability 5 The firm meets their promised time-frames for response
6 The firm is sympathetic and reassuring, when the customer has problems
7 They are dependable
8 They provide their services at the times promised
9 They keep accurate records
Responsiveness 10 They shouldn’t be expected to tell customers exactly when the service
will be performed, negative
11 It is not reasonable to expect prompt service from employees, negative
12 Employees do not always have to be willing to help customers, negative
13 It’s OK to be too busy to respond promptly to customer
requests, negative
SERVQUAL Dimensional Measurement

Assurance 14 Employees should be trustworthy
15 Customers should feel safe when transacting with employees
16 Employees should be polite
17 Employees should get adequate support from the firm to do their job well
Empathy 18 Firms should not be expected to give each customer individualized
attention, negative
19 Employees should not be expected to give each customer individualized
attention, negative
20 It is unrealistic to expect employees to fully understand the needs of the
customer, negative
21 It is unreasonable to expect employees to have the best interests of the
customer at heart, negative
22 Firms should not necessarily have to operate at hours convenient to all
customers, negative

Discussion Question
 Are the Ethiopian public sector organizations giving a focus for
Citizen-Centered Service Delivery?
 Evaluate service delivered by the Ethiopian public organizations
as per the Citizen first principles.

public policy session 6 for MA program pdf

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