Ethos Issue 4, Apr 2008

What Does It Mean to Optimise Public Service Delivery?
Lee Chong Hock and John Lim

CASE IN POINT: HOW MUCH IS "E-NOUGH"?
The tension that exists between the strategic push for e-Government and customer-focused service delivery is symptomatic of the need for a more focused strategy. On the one hand, in order to fully reap the benefits of electronic channels, both agencies and customers must be wholly onboard. Agencies must invest the resources necessary to make successful transition of services to the electronic channels, and customers must be willing and able to access them online. On the other hand, customer-focused service means service delivery at the greatest possible ease and convenience to the customer, as defined by the customer. This would mean that the customer has a choice among all available channels, all with the highest possible standards.

Currently, many agencies still use a mixed channel strategy, trying to strike a balance between fulfilling the goals of e-Government and providing a wide array of service channels to meet customer needs. Without making sense of the strategies we could take for service channel evolution and how these can be aligned at the Whole-of-Government level, it remains the agencies’ prerogative to determine that middle point and to manage that tension between strategies.

CONCLUSION
The size and nature of the Public Service do not lend itself well to rigid standardisation and normalisation. This is a good thing, as we increasingly rely on the creativity, dynamism and boldness of our agencies to carry out their duties in this constantly changing environment. The same goes for service excellence. Agencies should be allowed to improve and improvise at their own pace, governed by a central strategic directive. However, the greatest challenge with that is that perceptions of the Public Service are shaped by the "weakest link". This has been demonstrated by lapses in the "No Wrong Door" policy,² where customer satisfaction plummets at the point where the policy is disregarded, when the first officer "drops the ball".

One way to address this is to resist the urge to roll out blanket service improvement initiatives which agencies have to follow, and instead use a more targeted approach to achieve predefined Whole-of-Government outcomes. Attention and resources should be given to critical areas, such as supporting agencies that require more assistance, or building necessary infrastructure to aid agencies’ efforts. In essence, we need to articulate a credible Whole-of-Government vision of service excellence, facilitate the realisation of that vision, and then just trust our agencies to do the right thing.

Lee Chong Hock is an Assistant Director (Development) in the PS21 Office, where he oversees the customer and citizen engagement portfolio. He works with public agencies to strive for service excellence, as one of the focus areas under Singapore’s "Public Service for the 21st Century" (PS21) movement.

John Lim is a senior executive in the PS21 Office. He manages the citizen engagement portfolio in Public Service Office (PSO), and works with the Infocomm Development Authority to design and implement the Public Service’s e-engagement strategy under iGov2010, the Government’s five-year ICT master plan.

Through PS21, the Office hopes to build up capacity in the Public Service so that it is better prepared to meet future challenges. For more information, please visit http://www.ps21.gov.sg

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