Delivery will improve by focusing on the level of satisfaction
WHEN you give someone a gift, something he didn’t ask for, it’s a way of showing you care. It might be something he would never buy for himself. An extravagance.
And when we buy for ourselves, we don’t usually choose between brands based on the essential functionality of the thing. I didn’t choose my mobile phone for the quality of the calls it makes, I chose it as much for how it looks, the reputation of the manufacturer, and even the attention paid to the packaging design. I assume that if they put that much effort into the non-core aspects of the product, they probably put at least the same effort into the things that make it a phone.
Even the font used for the text on this page, or on street signs or book covers, influences how we feel about what the words are saying, and whether we believe them. And why, if you can afford it, do you choose private health care rather than a public hospital? Probably not because you think the doctors and nurses are better qualified, but because you will be seen to sooner, and can wait in more comfortable surroundings and will be treated well.
Considering that it is these optional extras that determine our choices and our levels of satisfaction in so much of our lives, it seems odd that we adopt a completely different attitude to most government services.
Actually it’s not so odd. We expect efficiency in the way government uses our money; and the extras, even if they don’t cost a lot, seem like a waste. But, like a gift that is not strictly necessary, we can value the optional extras.
So if government wants us to feel like they really care, they could add little frills to the services they provide, like training public servants to be friendlier. Or rewarding us for reporting faulty street lights and potholes. Or issuing us with electronic numbers so we don’t have to wait in the queue, and instead can go buy a coffee and watch our position in the queue on a mobile app.
But they don’t, because people say they should be providing the “basic services” everywhere first, before wasting money on frills – and because transparency and accountability have become the mantra that trumps all else, including whether the services actually meet real needs. The financial auditors are now determining how money gets spent, and it’s squeezing the life out of what government provides.
What looks wasteful to an auditor’s eyes might not look that way to us. But we are all caught in this trap of false economy. Why don’t we consider how to improve satisfaction with basic services by redefining those services?
The system of flush toilets, conven- tional sewerage networks and centralised wastewater treatment, for example, is not the only way to provide permanent sanitation solutions. We want them because they have become the norm, and they appear efficient to the user and the engineer; but they waste huge amounts of water. But because we are stuck on the idea that they are the best, the municipality is reluctant to try alternatives that could address several challenges at once.
Other forms of waterborne sanitation have previously been proposed for Cape Town’s informal settlements. They don’t have the operational efficiency of a centralised wastewater processing plant, but they promote efficient use of urban land by supporting housing where conventional sewerage networks don’t work, reduce waste by using the by-products locally, aren’t as disruptive to existing dwellings, and create permanent jobs at decentralised processing plants.
Some inefficiencies are needed for an overall improvement in levels of satisfaction and in what these systems can provide.
We don’t want wasteful government, but if our definition of waste is based on the simplistic assumption that the most important thing is to deliver products and services with minimum resources, we will overlook the benefits that can come from the process of delivery. If it costs a little more to deliver a service by involving the beneficiaries in defining the need and the service, there could be surprising outcomes. Sometimes it won’t work, but retreating after failure will simply make things worse.
If the focus is commitment to improving levels of satisfaction, not just delivering a product, the way things are delivered will change, and the product will improve.
If every government department started thinking courageously, the public might start viewing government in a more positive light.
@carbonsmart