Service Delivery

Service delivery can be defined as a process whereby governments deliver publicly identified goods and services to citizens or the community through various mechanisms, instruments, and relationships. Service delivery is a term that has gained prominence in the governance literature over the past half century, particularly under the pressures and promises of an expanding welfare state. Classical notions of service delivery have focused on the role of government in authorizing and delivering basic goods and services to select individuals or the broader community. But over time, interpretations of service delivery have been expanded to include the entire policy process (specifically, policy design, policy implementation, operational management or contractual arrangements, public resources—both financial and human—and monitoring and feedback). The development of service delivery has been influenced by changing ideas over public provision and alternative ways of providing goods and services in the context of economic and budgetary pressures.

There are three main modes through which goods and services can be provided. First, services can be delivered through direct governmental action. Often considered the traditional responsibility of public administration, delivery through this mode occurs when services are directly distributed by the administrative or bureaucratic apparatuses of government (i.e., ministries and departments of state) to individuals or communities. No intermediaries are necessary for service delivery to occur and, hence, the state is considered to hold a direct relationship with the recipients of services.

Second, service delivery can occur through the interactions and transactions between different orders of government. In federated systems, where constitutions or intergovernmental agreements define the parameters of public action, grants or transfers to subnational governments often provide the resources necessary to deliver services that could not be provided by one area of government alone. Patterns of service delivery may originate with the highest order of government (national or federal) and cascade to the lower orders of government for implementation; the pattern rarely flows in the opposite direction. Intergovernmental service delivery involves multiple public agencies collaborating in the provision of services to the community. However, with multiple government agencies collaborating to achieve service delivery outcomes, the problems of intent, priority, implementation, and quality assurance can emerge.

Third, service delivery can take place through specialist, nongovernmental providers contractually employed to implement programs. These third-party providers can include large publicly listed companies, privately incorporated firms, nonprofit ideological or faith-based organizations, the voluntary sector, and community-based welfare groups. Governments use third-party providers for various philosophical and financial reasons, namely cost, quality of service, specialization, access to clients, debureaucratization, and to remove government agencies from delivery responsibilities.

The services delivered through these modes are expansive in nature (ranging from income support for individuals to services that benefit the entire community) and vary enormously across jurisdictions. However, services common to most jurisdictions can be said to consist of: core state services (such as law and order, public safety, national defense, and monetary functions); business and economic services (such as regulation, industry support schemes, and tax expenditures and concessions); infrastructure and physical services (such as road, rail, ports, telecom munications, and technology services); social and welfare services (such as pensions, income support, medical services, and assistance to disadvantaged groups); environmental and quality-of-life services (such as public parks, urban renewal projects, sporting fields, cultural events, and museums).

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