Local Government Studies
ISSN: 0300-3930 (Print) 1743-9388 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/flgs20
Local government and the public service
orientation
Michael Clarke & John Stewart
To cite this article: Michael Clarke & John Stewart (1986) Local government and the public
service orientation, Local Government Studies, 12:3, 1-8, DOI: 10.1080/03003938608433268
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03003938608433268
Published online: 02 Jan 2008.
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Local Government Studies: May/June 1986
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Ideas and Innovations for Community Government
MICHAEL CLARKE
Director, Local Government Training Board
and
JOHN STEWART
Institute of Local Government Studies, University of Birmingham
Local Government and the Public Service
Orientation
THE PUBLIC SERVICE ORIENTATION
Local authorities search for a sense of purpose that can drive forward management and motivate their staff. The answer may lie in words so familiar,
that their meaning has been lost: public service.
The activities of a local authority are not carried out for their own sake,
but to provide service for the public. Service for the public places its own
special requirements on management in local government. In the day to day
pressures, those requirements can be forgotten. Yet whatever the level of
resources available to local government, or whatever the activities undertaken by local authorities, their justification lies in service for the public.
This paper sets out the implications of the public service orientation for management in local government.
The public service orientation recognizes that:
* a local authority's activities exist to provide service for the public;
* a local authority will be judged by the quality of service provided within
the resources available;
* the service provided is only of real value if it is of value to those for
whom it is provided;
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* those for whom services are provided are customers demanding high
quality service;
* quality of service demands closeness to the customer.
It sets service to the public as the key value which, in turn means putting
value on:
* quality of service;
* the public as customer;
* responsiveness to the client.
Those values have to be expressed in day to day management action. If service for the public really is taken as the key value for management in local
government, then managers must know the services wanted by the public,
be close to the customer, and seek out customer views, complaints and
suggestions.
The public service orientation challenges those senior managers who:
* judge the quality of service by organizational or professional standards
rather than by customer standards;
* devote little time to learning about the customer away from the central
office in which they work;
* provide no training for staff on quality of customer service;
* do not involve customers in decisions on the services provided of projects undertaken;
* have not considered whether reception arrangements help the
customer.
If a local authority sets service for the public as the key value, changes in
management practice will be necessary. These might include:
* regular surveys to establish satisfaction with the services provided;
* every house receiving a leaflet asking for suggestions about local authority services;
* all complaints from the public being replied to within three days;
* the design of all new buildings being discussed with those who would use
them;
* new brochures, forms and notices being market-tested for understanding by the public;
* hot-lines to chief executives and chief officers being provided for public
complaints and suggestions;
* all chief officers spending some time each year on reception at the council offices;
* quality of service for the public being a major criterion in deciding promotion;
* an annual quality appraisal meeting being held by each committee to
assess the service provided, inviting public contribution;
Local Government Studies: May/June 1986
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* all clients of a service being given a statement of the standards of service
to be aimed at;
* senior management to spend time walking their locality, visiting, and
listening to the customer.
AN ORIENTATION FOR OUR TIMES
The public service orientation not only meets present management needs,
but responds to new pressures. In doing so it sets new tasks:
* The Audit Commission has rightly advised local authorities to ensure
that their management is guided by vision or shared values. Service for
the public provides such a vision and such a value. That value can guide
the management of local government. If accepted, the difficult and
demanding task is to work out the implication for management structure, management systems and management styles.
* Many local authorities face problems of staff morale. Under continuing
attack, faced with the problems of cutback and constraint, and deprived
of the achievement of growth there is uncertainty of purpose. The public
service orientation provides a sense of purpose. Whatever the level of
resources, the commitment is the highest possible quality of service.
The task for management in local government is to secure that commitment.
* There is a search for value for money. That search cannot be successful
if the emphasis is on cost alone. Value must also be striven for. The
public service orientation provides that drive. Value is found in service
provided. The task is to secure that management in local government
appraises the performance of the local authority not by cost alone but
also by the quality of service provided.
* Local authorities face a decline of acceptance, shared with other public
services. It is as if the public service is seen as serving the organization
rather than the public. The public service orientation can build public
confidence. The task is for the local authority to be close to the
customer, so that public service is in reality service for the public.
At a time of declining resources, excuses are too easily made for low quality
of service. At a time when local government is beleaguered by criticism,
retreat becomes an automatic reaction. It is at times such as these that local
authorities have to emphasize their purposes and their values. Showing that
public service means service for the public may be a key to this.
THE MANAGEMENT CONSEQUENCES
If accepted, the public service orientation must become part of the day to
day working of local authorities. That requires commitment by senior management. Senior management must show by their pattern of activities, their
focus of attention and the messages given to staff that they value, first and
foremost, service to the public. The public service orientation must govern
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management processes and management structures and management style.
Management must have the capacity to analyse service for the public, be
close to the customer, open up the authority to the public, and make service
for the public the guiding management criteria.
How any local authority meets these requirements must be worked out in
that authority. Service for the public is not service for an abstraction, but
service to a particular public with its own views, ideas and demands. It is to
its own customers that an authority has to be close. This paper sets out possibilities for management action to stimulate thought not to prescribe.
ANALYSIS OF SERVICE
The public service orientation applies first to services already provided. The
local authority must see its activities as justified only by the service provided.
Analysing services in this way is a first step. The immediate questions for
analysis are:
* what are the services provided by the authority for its public?
* who are the customers for each of those services - actual and potential?
The activities of the authority are analysed not by organizational arrangements or by professional requirements, but by the service provided.
The questions are not easily answered. Management has tended to work
in organizational rather than service terms. The authority is inclined to look
inward; this analysis forces it to look outward.
Nor is it always easy to identify the customers for a service. For some
services the customers are not necessarily those with whom the service interacts: if a restaurant's kitchens are inspected by an environmental health
department, the customer for the service is not the restaurant but its clients.
On the other hand the customers for some services are the whole public:
clean air is provided not for a few, but for all. In other cases there are widely
different views on who the customers are: in the education service are they
pupils, parents, or society at large? Notwithstanding the difficulties, the
search for the customer is important for an authority. It is too easy to forget
who the customers are as the authority's organizational routines are
followed.
Beyond services and customers, key characteristics of the service can be
identified among which are:
* speed of service;
* extent of consumer choice;
* coverage;
* discrimination of need;
* quality of service;
* sensitivity to complaints.
Between characteristics there are trade-offs. The local authority will, in
practice, emphasize one characteristic rather than another. Quality may be
Local Government Studies: May/June 1986
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sacrificed for speed of service or for comprehensive coverage. There is an
organizational choice, often made implicitly or by the traditions of past practice. Analysis of service makes explicit the choices made in the weight given
to characteristics.
For the service-centred authority, the issues must be overt; it is important
to know, for example, whether the weight given by the local authority to
quality as opposed to speed is the weight given by the customer. There may
be reasons for a difference. But the authority should know what the
customer wants from a service and whether the authority provides it.
CLOSE TO THE CUSTOMER
The analysis of service requires a local authority to be close to its customers.
A local authority provides services not for its own sake, but for the public as
customer. The customer, whether called client, tenant, user or public, can
help the authority decide whether the authority has got it right. The question
to be asked is: Are we providing what the customer wants? The local authority may then still want to ask the question: Are we providing what the
customer needs? But the second question must be grounded in the understanding provided by the answer to the first question and cannot be
answered by the authority alone. The authority that tries to answer the
second question without regard to the first, does not provide service for the
customer, but to the customer.
The questions can be asked about existing activities or about new projects
or activities. The need is for a local authority to be close to its customers, so
that the questions are answered in its working. A service-centred authority
ensures that its staff are always thinking about the customer, listening to
their views and looking for their problems.
A local authority close to its customers might be expected to:
* hold citizen surveys to establish public satisfaction with existing services;
* ask for suggestions from the public for improving services;
* seek out complaints about inadequate services;
* test public attitudes to levels of expenditure and taxation and to the allocation of expenditure to different services;
* introduce quality monitoring of services by customer panels meeting for
regular discussion with staff;
* involve customer panels in preparing briefs prepared for all building
projects, as when tenants help in the design of new housing;
* introduce project review in which user views are sought on completed
building projects;
* carry out market research on customer reaction to proposed changes in
service, as when bus travellers are asked views on alternative bus
designs;
* maximize customer choice, so that wherever possible, the customer can
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*
choose the service they want;
provide customers, consumers and users of services with standard of
service statements and encourage them to evaluate the service by that
standard;
above all encourage its management to look and to listen to the
customer, walking the authority and watching its work.
Other approaches will be developed once it is accepted that a local authority needs to know what the customer wants, how the customer uses the
services and how the customer evaluates the services. Once the authority
accepts that it has to get close to its customers, and to listen to what they say,
then there will be no shortage of initiatives. The listening authority learns
quickly. There are a variety of ways of collecting views and suggestions from
the customer. The problem is not how to get close to the customer but to
want to do so.
A local authority may go further by involving the customer directly in its
decisions. It can involve customers in the running of services. Tenants control over estate management or user control over a sports centre are
examples. Then the customer rules.
Closeness to the customer by itself is not enough. Closeness is for learning
and learning certainly comes from suggestion, complaints, opinions,
customer choice and action in use. Learning must feed into the working of
the authority and must be enforced in the management processes of the
authority. For example:
* the budgetary process of the authority may require that any submission
of departmental estimates contain a summary of work done to learn
customer views on existing services and on proposed changes in those
services;
* any proposal for a capital project could contain a statement both of how
customer views will be obtained for the design process and of how and
when the project will be evaluated after completion;
* performance review procedures can be structured around customer
views.
The service-centred authority must learn from its public as customer, but
must use that learning. Closeness to the customer must achieve purpose in
action.
OPENING UP THE AUTHORITY
A local authority that provides service for the public, must be open to the
public. Too often and in too many ways the local authority closes itself off
from the public.
* buildings, by their impersonality grandeur or scale, can deter;
* directions on access may be meaningful for those who already know
their way, but not for those who are lost in the corridors of power;
Local Government Studies: May/June 1986
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* forms confuse the uncertain and unsure;
* offices can be geographically as well as organizationally remote from
those who most need them;
* notices can be written more for the organization than for those who read
them;
* reception arrangements can be exclusion arrangements for those who
step with hesitation through the doors.
In these and many other ways, the local authority describes itself to its
public. Often messages tell the public of closure, not openness. A local authority needs to understand the message it gives. The authority needs to
understand what the public reads from the location of its buildings, the
reception arrangements, the appearance of its notices, the wording of its
forms and the style of its letters.
By surveys, by client evaluation, by direct experience, by pilot testing and
above all by listening, senior management in a local authority can learn how
it closes. Then they can start to learn how to open.
A local authority committed to the public service orientation will emphasize the need to:
* turn official language into understandable language and test that understanding;
* emphasize form design for easy completion and test that ease of completion;
* review buildings and offices to ease public access and watch for discouragement;
* decentralize for ease of access and learn the response;
* make reception arrangements helping arrangements and encourage the
helping;
* train staff for the open authority and learn from the customers of the
organization.
Public relations are not formed at the centre of the authority or by a public
relations office, but in every contact made and every contact not made,
between the authority and the public. Service for the public requires the
opening up of the authority.
The Management Principle
The public service orientation sets service for the public as the key value for
management. It becomes the management principle for the authority. It requires that:
* methods of work are designed to meet customer needs rather than
organization needs;
* all existing activities should be appraised by the criteria of service for the
public;
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* all new policy proposals should be judged by the service provided for the
public;
* staff should be appraised, whether through formal or informal processes, by the quality of their service for the public (helpfulness; dealing
with complaints quickly; seeking public views; proposals for better
public service);
* organizational structure and management systems should be reviewed
to support service to the customer.
Key questions for management include: Is senior management close to
the customer or isolated by organizational hierarchy? Does the division of
activities between and within departments reflect organizational needs
rather than the needs of service for the public? Where in the budgetary process is service for the public emphasized? Does policy planning start from
the customer?
Management in local government exists to provide public service. Service
for the public must become the management principle.
POSITIVE STAFF POLICIES
The public service orientation requires a positive staff policy, for it is only
through staff that service for the public can be achieved. A message has to be
given and heard. Service for the public matters. The message cannot be
heard unless it is given and reinforced in many ways and at many times.
A positive staff policy requires:
* emphasis on the value which is placed on service for the public. This can
be achieved by staff newsletters, briefing groups, meetings, visits by
senior management and in the day to day flow of business. The local
authority that does not show its staff its key values, can hardly be surprised, if they do not know what they are;
* involvement of staff from all organizational levels, in quality appraisal
groups to review service provided;
* the encouragement of staff initiative in service for the public, spreading
information through the authority on what has been achieved;
* staff training courses to build specific skills in analysis of service, market
research, form design, better English;
* seminars to build staff understanding of the implications of service for
the public;
* staff development programmes that go beyond courses and seminars.
Planned experience can give understanding of public attitudes and
encourage learning.
In public service the local authority and its staff can rediscover a sense of
purpose. A public service should provide service for the public. In this way
the public service orientation challenges management and management
development.