Evaluating public service delivery in emerging markets

Abstract

In the recent past, the public sector has been under considerable pressure to reform itself. Rising consumer expectations aided by enhancements in social media, information and communication technologies and demand for transparency have added pressure on public service agencies to make the process more inclusive and participatory. Governments across the world are therefore constantly trying to improve the quality and content of services being delivered to their citizens. Transformation in public sector delivery will not be sustainable and transitory unless the restructuring efforts are linked to performance evaluation. Recent studies have identified gaping holes in evaluating public service delivery via conventional approaches. In this paper, we propose a novel framework in the form of a capability maturity model to evaluate public service delivery. Our model maps the various factors associated with a public service in order to determine its maturity level. In order to assess the effectiveness of our proposed framework, we chose two public services as case studies. As part of our case study, we analyzed the maturity level and also proposed changes to improve these two public services. © 2011 IEEE.