Based on true event, happened somewhere in September, 2018.
I was waiting for my connecting flight from Amsterdam Airport to Portugal, in between I went to toilet and to my surprise I saw the little smiley face feedback machines everywhere in the toilet room and on tissue paper machines, I couldn’t stop evaluating one of the feedback machine, I was clicking each button again and again, checking the time and frequency of clicks… as I was leaving I saw security officer was entering to toilet and went toward the exact machine I was disturbing just two minutes ago, I was so surprised with the whole situation not only feedback mechanism but speed and accuracy of responsiveness for unexpected event or problem.
When I was returning back to my terminal, I was just thinking if my country will come to this level of accountability and responsiveness while providing services. The people are the service recipients and real service evaluators, they can tell service providers if they are providing services rightfully or not, the only thing service providers need to do is how to get useful and relevant information from service recipients that can help to improve the service, it can happen when service providers create good feedback mechanisms and be responsive and accountable, put the comfort of people (service recipients) as priority while designing services, update and improve its resources accordingly, note down and discuss unusual cases happening during the service for future improvement.
As long as I have lived in my country I always have questions, uncertainty, disappointment, frustration and distrust while receiving a public service but to my knowledge till date there is no commonly and easily accessible complain or feedback mechanism, or maybe it doesn’t exist at all, it feels like government do not care if I have a problem during a service or if I am happy in the end of service or not because government is not asking me about it so how can government claim they have designed a good service; there is no holistic approach and intention to understand people’s satisfaction and feeling while leaving a service and the reason behind it, and wonders how can people be happy from government, it’s simple, ask them!
It’s mention able that gathering feedback and complain is not enough if it’s not utilized purposefully, there should be possibilities and intention to use this information for improvement of services otherwise repeating the same questions and having no improvement can also have negative impact on people’s perception about government. MAYBE government can first do a research HOW and WHY people (educated, illiterate, disabled, and old…) would like to provide feedback or complain about a service, and based on this information create different channels of providing feedback and complain, in order to use the collected data purposefully it’s analysis report can be used as quarterly report in different level of meetings (managers, policy makers, ministers cabinet,…) to make required decisions and take actions, and also this data can represent the success of relevant service or government entity from people’s perspective.
Public Sector Innovation 