REFORM OF PUBLIC SERVICE PROVISION SYSTEMS: WORLDWIDE EXPERIENCE

Abstract

Ukraine's orientation towards European and Euro-Atlantic integration, effective operations, and the recovery of Ukraine during wartime and the post-war period require reforms aimed at providing public services in modern conditions, aligning their provision with relevant standards, and improving their quality. This publication addresses the necessity of studying global practices in public service delivery to develop recommendations for enhancing their quality under contemporary circumstances in Ukraine.

The analysis conducted in the publication can be summarized from several perspectives:

1. Decentralization: the degree of decentralization was different. Where governments were concerned with maintaining same and equal access to services, such as in education services in France and Austria, strong central control was maintained, and local authority was limited.
2. Accountability: N. Flynn and L. Strehl expressed serious concern in their work about the confusion regarding who is accountable to whom, for what, and when. In the Netherlands, for example, it was unclear who would be responsible for the deterioration of the quality of public services at the municipal level if budgetary funds proved to be insufficient.
3. Personnel Management: In all the countries considered at that time, there was an increase in investments in the development and training of public service providers. A growing customer-oriented approach was identified. However, not all training programs focused on service management and customer orientation. For instance, training to promote the development of an active citizenship formation was widespread, which was considered important for ensuring the provision of quality public services.
4. Financial Management: Budgeting was a common practice, and there was a departure from traditional approaches to public sector budgeting. Overall, changes in financial management in all countries highlighted the importance of business planning and measuring the effectiveness of public authorities' activities.
5. Interaction with the Private Sector: The authors found evidence that public services in many countries were disillusioned with market forces and market competition, often associated with the inability of markets to deliver promised improvements. As a result, in countries such as New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Sweden, policies began to emphasize non-competitive ways of enhancing the efficiency of public service organizations. Different reasons are cited from country to country. In the UK, for instance, a high level of expenses related to contracting and administering public service delivery contracts by private organizations was noted.

Despite many changes aimed at improving the quality of public services, which were initially made to achieve specific political goals, there were also entirely objective grounds for implementing these changes. Factors driving and continuing to drive the necessity of introducing changes both to the public services themselves and to the management systems of their provision including: reduction of government expenditures in some areas and their increase in others; emphasis on the public as a client and customer choice; replacement of administrators with managers in the public service; blurring the lines between private and public sectors; demographic changes such as aging; introduction of performance management in public authority activities; adoption of information technologies in public authority activities; increased citizen discernment regarding public services; the influence of globalization on domestic markets; extensive privatization of state and municipal property.