There is presently no platform in the public sector for constructive discussion of the quality of public services involving their end users, namely citizens and citizens. The elections or social participation seen in this function have been subject to the needs of politicians and administrations. Media pre-election comments are mainly about "narrations" created by election staffs, not the quality of common good solutions. On the another hand, the various forms of participation, which by definition are just methods of improving public service projects utilizing user experience, without the support of systemic policies, have become a bureaucratic procedure.
The deficiency of specified a platform creates frustration among people who effort to make civilian society. Being both employers and public sector customers, they are kept at a distance by dependence on the political and bureaucratic apparatus, i.e. their service providers. It's like a resident who can't tell the janitor that he's snowed off his building due to the fact that at most he's gonna resent him, and he's not gonna change his M.O....
Meanwhile, 1 of the effects of the improvement of civilian society and our entry into the Union is the immense increase in the social and civic self-awareness of people. As a consequence of these changes, a percent of the fewer but notable group of qualified citizens and residents have developed sensitivity to the common good and know how to accomplish it with concrete actions. Their energy, experience, ingenuity do not have a natural outlet channel, so we are wasting the possible that we have created.
Participation is by definition a method of improving public service projects utilizing user experience, but without the support of a systemic policy it has only become a bureaucratic procedure.
At the same time, a large part of decision-makers and institutions remained in the mentality and the planet of 20th-century solutions. This creates fundamental inconsistency and social tension, causing many local disputes and conflicts between local governments and civilian servants and experts and average residents1.
One of the effects of the improvement of civilian society and our entry into the Union is the immense increase in the social and civic self-awareness of people. However, we inactive cannot exploit this potential.
Some public sector failures, both on the government's side and on the self-government's side, can be embarrassing, and those that seem easy to avoid are repeated for years. We frequently know how to improve, due to the fact that we have seen specified solutions in another country or city. all day we besides face external examples of concern for the higher quality of services and commercial products. All the more annoying is the fact that doing something better in the public sector, which we ourselves finance from taxes, is frequently simply impossible or takes years (famous #not available). It is worth noting that all major company has a investigation and improvement department, any quality control office, or an worker proposition system. It seems absurd that specified a strategy of raising quality is lacking in the public sector, which de facto is the largest and most influential “corporate” in Poland and turns the biggest money.
Such a situation can be explained as follows. The private sector participates in marketplace competition. In the free market, the 1 who uses, chooses and pays is the same person. So there is no anticipation that she will constantly pay for something that she will be constantly dissatisfied with. If the company doesn't care about quality, it doesn't get money and falls. In the public sector, however, we all pay up front. We usage it, but individual else chooses and pays for us with our money. Whether it is better or worse, it will not change the situation of the buyer on our behalf. So there is no immediate force to make this “something” better for us, due to the fact that we have no choice, and if it is worse, no local government or government will go bankrupt. There is so no chance in the public sector that the quality of services to the public will emergence spontaneously.
As a result, improving the quality of public services depends mainly on the goodwill of politicians or officials. In the absence of another possibilities, criticism of these services affects them personally due to the fact that it undermines their good intentions. This leads to a unusual situation in which the quality of public services becomes a individual good for service providers.
There is no chance in the public sector that the quality of services to the public will emergence spontaneously. The marketplace mechanics will not work here due to the fact that in the public sector we all pay “upfront”.
We may say that the criticized employees and employees of the offices are simply sorry or have more work for which no 1 thanks them, so in time for their own intellectual wellness or comfort they isolate themselves from the community by bureaucratic methods. Politics is worse due to the fact that criticism worsens their political image, so yet besides insistent citizens become their political opponent. This casts on all democracy, which paradoxically becomes this political opponent of power, due to the fact that it undermines its authority.
Václav Havel in an essay Power of the Powerless He noted that power is constantly generating ‘self-control’, i.e. striving to live its own life, to care for its own interests. This is an unavoidable situation and that is why the relations of power must be constantly challenged, balanced by the subjection of society. specified a mechanics can be a consistent policy to improve the quality of public services, as it makes the decision of the authorities dependent on user experience. It so has a circumstantial nonsubjective which can be achieved by the success of power, although it is verified outside its control area. Otherwise, public sector activities become a propaganda of success, that is, convincing voters that they should be satisfied, and if they are not, they deficiency good will.
Power is constantly generating “self-control”, that is, it strives to live its own life, to take care of its own interests. This is an unavoidable situation and that is why the relations of power must be constantly challenged, balanced by the subjection of society.
While the public sector does not know what to do with criticism of its actions, in the private sector, any comments of users are treated as a building block of quality according to the simplest algorithm of evolution: if something does not meet expectations, it is out of circulation. Various methods are utilized to monitor user experience: from investigation and prototype investigating to tracking sales results. Only those actions that pass verification in the environment are repeated.
For the public sector, this environment is the needs and expectations of taxpayers. This is an highly rich and dynamic world, which should be dealt with by a separate discipline of knowledge. It could be called the ergonomics of gathering social needs, the art of creating solutions that reconcile various, frequently conflicting interests, with limited common resources. It includes sustainable development, thus preserving resources for future generations as 1 of the interest groups, and universal design, i.e. creating solutions tailored to the widest spectrum of needs. It specialises in the search for synergistic solutions and social education and animation needed where people request to be persuaded (against their peculiar interests) to share resources with others or to quit solutions generating besides much social costs.
Ergonomics of gathering social needs is the art of creating solutions that reconcile various, frequently conflicting interests, with limited common resources.
Even now, the critical issue of gathering social needs is the injustice associated with the unequal distribution of the quality of public services, specified as the exclusion of transport or the negative impact of cities on the wellness of residents. Inequality in this area is shown by the wellness Cities Index developed in investigation funded by LUXMED. In this 2023 census, more than half of 66 region cities turned out to be twice as healthy as the leader, or Warsaw, and after all, a healthy urban environment cannot be a prize for the place of birth. Authorities must search to destruct inequalities in access to good surviving conditions. This comes straight from the social agreement of a democratic, civilian state. Protection against specified inequality is for everyone – like 1 vote in the election. Those who do not realize this lose the voices of the victims to those who promise to care for them.
Additionally, there is the dynamics of social needs, resulting both from the constant tendency to make inequality, as well as from the pyramid of Maslow's needs. People are never satisfied with “warm water in the tap” due to the fact that erstwhile they have it, they have higher and more complex needs. The art of gathering them is, among another things, not to exhaust resources to meet the needs of the lower and not to block the way to satisfy the higher.
More than half of 66 region cities have proved to be twice as healthy as the leader, or Warsaw, and a healthy urban environment cannot be a prize for the place of birth.
It is crucial to want to usage its own user experience to make and improve your own environment. The public sector should make this possible for residents and citizens. A good strategy of gathering social needs is like a training pyramid: it has something for everyone and offers everyone a way of promotion, while removing glass ceilings.
Quality policy is not abstract or dream. It's very developed. know-how. There are many methods specified as design thinking, kaizen or HACCP, allowing concrete results to be achieved in improving quality or optimizing costs. By applying them, we can easy shift the attention of decision-makers and voters from the matters that waste our time, to the issues of better distribution of satisfaction from life throughout society. You can learn them, you can implement them systemicly or partially, and you can get a sense of shared success instead. Not only do we request to give ourselves the right to make mistakes, but we request to survey them with curiosity due to the fact that they give us the cognition of what can be improved and improved. Then it turns out that everything can be done.
1 specified "active residents" frequently describe themselves as alleged urban movements (even if they do not formalise their activities in the form of associations, for example), stressing that they represent any higher needs and wider social expectations.
