The notion of municipal service from the view of assessment of population satisfaction with the performanceof local government bodies

Innovative processes in public administration and municipal management are largely oriented at building a service state model, when thestate is an institution offering services to the public. The key measure of power efficiency is the quality of public services, and the qualitymeans the degree of public needs satisfaction. Such a model is meant to identify the evaluation of public services. In the Russian Federationaccording to regulations, sociological surveys of urban districts (metropolitan regions) must be carried out to find out the degree of satisfactionwith municipal services since 2008. Determination of the subject for sociological study needs an accurate definition of the term municipalservices. The paper links the concept content with a number of local problems to be solved by the local government bodies (LGB).To solve the problems, the LGB are to develop and realize a complex of legal and technical-organizational measures. It is hard for a citizento evaluate adequately the work of the local authorities within this aspect. Therefore, the population should be given the right to assess thefinal result along with the procedure of receiving the service. And the local authorities should be obliged to draw conclusions and takemeasures connected with planning, realization, coordination and control. The identification of the public service content, proceeding fromthe social functions of the relevant area, also arrives at a conclusion that the consumers are not experts in these fields, so it is necessary tofocus on the choice of general criteria. Since the municipal services are hierarchical in one and the same field, the author suggests that theassessment of the National Health Service, education, etc. should be excluded from the analysis. When forming the methods of evaluation itshould be determined which services to take into consideration: those secured by the budgetary financing or others as well. Besides, it isimportant to know which mechanism of the managerial decision is taken by sociological information. In keeping with this it can be eitheronly quantitative or both quantitative and qualitative. On the whole, when giving the sociological evaluation of the quality of public services,it is necessary to take into account the ambiguity of the following approaches: - a citizen is treated either as a customer getting a serviceor as a representative of the population at large; - a citizen evaluates the LGB performance in accordance with the accomplishment ofmeasures leading to providing services or the final result; - analysing the final result, a citizen assesses either the performance of the authorityor of the institution which provided the service; - a citizen evaluates the services offered 1) free of charge or 2) at prices regulated byauthorities or 3)on market terms; - catering for citizens opinion results in either taking financial decisions or adjustment of service content.The choice of this or that service affects the method of satisfaction evaluation.

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