Some reflections on the nature of public services

Diving into Competing in a Service Economy: How to Create a Competitive Advantage Through Service Development and Innovation I found some interesting theories on the nature of services that relates to my previous post on the problematic nature of service innovation within the public sector. The first, and perhaps painfully obvious one, is that the public sector leans heavily towards the services end of the goods and services continuum show below.

The goods and services continuum. Copyright Richard Samuel

If services are heterogeneous, intangible and based on the co-creation of value, that is a perfect description of what the public sector provides. What might differentiate the public sector is that the services usually involve many different touchpoints with different organisations and departments over an extended period of time. The complicate the issue further, most customers (citizens, inhabitants, clients etc) don't really know nor care about who is providing what parts of the specific service. There are at least two interesting consequences of this:

1. It conflicts with the underlying organisational principles of the public sector, as I expanded upon in my previous post. 
2. Even highly improved individual services might fail to provide overall customer value.

I'll expand on the second point shortly, but first I have to digress somewhat into the theory of services and their position within the public sector: A different way to describe public "services" is to describe them as solutions, or linked activities if we're using the terminology from Johson&Gustafson, to customer problems. Welfare, for example, is a complex of many different services, provided by many different organisations in order to help (even if that term is hotly debated) the "cusomer" or client back into a self-sustaining position (the goal is actually to not provide the services involved. An interesting quality I'll get back to in my next post). This means that the experience as a whole, i e the value created, is dependent of each of the services involved. Poor service from one party lowers the overall creation of value and, perhaps more importantly, the experience carries over to the next party. In the worst case this can set in motion a veritable avalanche of value destruction.

Going back to the second point in the list above, I've personally witnessed and read about several different public sector parties that strive for the creation of excellent individual service offerings. While all such attempts should be lauded, they are all doomed to fail unless they recognize that they are parts, links, in a solution to a complex problem or need. I consider this to be essential in order for the public sector to deliver high value. It does, of course, related to the basic questions raised by Johonson&Gustafson such as what culture we should strive for within the public sector, the recognition that we can't always be everything for everyone and that the indiviudal services we provide are links that are highly dependent on other links in a complex solution to complex needs.