Public sector leaders around the world are facing a common set of challenges to meet the increased expectations of their ‘customers’, ‘consumers’, ‘clients’, or ‘citizens’ in an era of declining public trust.1 A common challenge faced by every organisation (public and private) and, particularly the Australian Public Service (APS), is how to service its citizens and businesses, better and at a sustainable cost. To address this, the APS needs to find ways of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of its service delivery functions. This means providing value for money by improving quality of service (accessibility for all and satisfactory citizen experiences and outcomes), and where possible and appropriate, reducing the costs involved in providing those services.
This challenge is particularly acute in regional and rural Australia where a combination of the tyranny of distance, the absence of critical population mass, idiosyncratic demography, more limited smart phone and internet access, the difficulty of attracting core public service capabilities and declining public trust has increased the complexity of service delivery. This is prompting the APS to explore new sustainable models for service delivery – models that can improve user experience and outcomes through enhanced service levels at the same or reduced cost.
We argue in this report that public services can be a critical space for trust-building between government and citizen but this requires development of citizen-centric service models that place the language of the citizen at the centre of service culture, design and delivery and embrace the mantra – “Citizens not customers – keep it simple, do what you say and say what you do”. “Citizens and not customers” because the notion of citizenship builds trust. It helps establish a trust system between government and citizen that is based on parity of esteem and creates common ground for transactions to take place. In contrast, given imperfect access to resources, customers are inherently unequal and potentially a force for distrust.
Meeting citizen expectations inevitably requires both a better understanding of the service needs and aspirations of an increasingly segmented citizenry and a service culture that see’s like a citizen and not a customer.
1 It is noteworthy that the APS does not have a common language to describe the beneficiaries of its programs, products and services; different agencies use different concepts. Henceforth, unless stated we will use the concept of customer, consumer and client interchangeably.