In this article possibilities of using social qualimetry as a new tool in assessing the quality of public services to improve the quality of services and their accessibility in the Kyrgyz Republic were described; as well as the need to develop common indicators for assessing the quality, reliability, transparency of services provided by local authorities for improvement of social policy. Despite the large number of proposed methodologies for assessing the quality of state (municipal) services provision, there are still existing problems in the procedure and determination of the assessment effectiveness. Objectives of this study analyzed in the essence of results on the government management model (municipal administration) system. The content of approaches assessing the quality of state and municipal governance, expected from the assessment of effects expressed in quantitative and qualitative indicator. Proposals to improve the effectiveness of the assessment quality, provision of state (municipal) services, the level of satisfaction of citizens with the quality of the services provided.
Improving the quality of life of the population in Kyrgyzstan is the main goal of the state social policy. The means to achieve this goal are improving the mechanism of assessing the quality of local government activity. Indicators of the conditions and quality of life of the population are needs and their provision with appropriate services. Good municipal administration based on the public administration activity by establishing a set of ethical rules of behavior, and standards taken into account by the public administration activity ( Matei & Băieşiu, 2014 ). Local people receive various types of services from government agencies, local governments (Moore et al., 2017), public and community organizations, business entities, as well as private individuals. The methodological basis of the article is research materials, the instrument of which is to identify priority problems and reflect the real state, capabilities, and prospects of the services provided in the field.
Today, it is important for the government to begin directly the stage of implementation of those recommendations, taking into account the changes, which themselves implies a change in the approach to the work of all state bodies.
Literature review more than 16 references and analysis methods, explanation with examples performed in this article.
The needs of effective state management of socio-economic development predetermine the need for timely receipt and analysis of relevant and comprehensive, reliable, and scientifically based on information with official status. Along with economic indicators, the necessary information includes data on social indicators, directions, and rates of their use, for stable socio-economic development. Meanwhile, the processes of interaction between society and government are not limited to economic aspects—economic activity and the whole life of people take place directly in the interaction of the local population and local governments based on interaction to improve and satisfy socio-economic needs through the consumption of public services and its elements. To assess the quality of the services provided, methods of quantitative assessment, methods of reducing to a single indicator several quantitative estimates of various parameters characterizing quality should be relevant. Qualimetry ( Lobanov , 2013 ) in science regarded as an independent science of assessing the quality of any objects. However, to solve many practical problems, unified methods needed to more accurately and accurately determine the quality levels and, on this basis, make adequate managerial decisions regarding the quality of the services provided. The Local Government Performance (Astrini, 2015) Index (social qualimetry) provides a new approach to measuring, analyzing, and improving the services provided by local governments. This tool aimed to collect and evaluate in detail information on issues of local and public sector activities and the provision of services to citizens and enterprises.
The term qualimetry (from Latin “quails” means quality, and Greek “metreo” means to measure) determined as a scientific discipline, within the framework of methodology and problems, a comprehensive, quantitative assessment of the quality of objects of any nature are studied: animate or inanimate objects or processes labor products of nature, having a material or spiritual nature (it is natural that the object of application of the methods of qualimetry can be any constructive and technological solution if its quality needs to be subjected to qualimetry analysis). Qualimetry is an area of practical and scientific activity related to the development of theoretical foundations and methods for measuring and quantifying quality. In a dynamic environment, state and municipal institutions focused on managing the quality of services, thus assessing the performance of the institution improves the quality of service (Ennew & Binks, 1999).
Quality of service has always been an important issue; however, the interpretation of quality, as well as quality control methods, has changed over time. Currently, understanding of quality is even wider; it includes the quality of processes and functions performed in institutions and inclusion of all employees in the process of improving the quality of municipal services. In public sector institutions, the issues of quality of services are mainly related to the directly responsible areas, trying to force each employee to not only implement all the procedures of activities correctly and on time but to be worried and think about further improvement of their activities. Greater emphasis should place on assessing the main economic resource of this era and disclosing the quality of knowledge of an employee in an institution. This will emphasize that management of institutions understands the importance of quality of service, however, the practical management of the quality of services in the public sector is still loosely related to needs analysis of service quality models; assessment of the quality of public services provided by the local government.
Many different methods known for the comprehensive assessment of the quality of industrial products, but at the same time, it is most difficult to assess the quality of public services. When assessing the quality in the field of public services, the subjective perception of quality on the part of the consumer is of great importance, which, as a rule, expressed in a non-numerical form and is more difficult to formalize using certain mathematical models. Based on existing mathematical models as applied to the problems of qualimetry, the development of science-based, as well as their adaptation in the management of public services and improving their quality and accessibility is an urgent problem and is of great practical importance.
When considering issues of quality assessment (Mert et al., 2014) in the service sector, the perception of the quality of services on the part of the consumer plays an important role. Assessing the effectiveness of public administration at the local level, social qualimetry provides critical feedback needed for political reform. The productivity of public administration is multidimensional, including the quality of the provision of services, equal access to citizens and rationalization of procedures for obtaining services, from the citizens’ point of view, taking into account the availability and quality of services on issues of local and public sector activities and the provision of services to citizens and enterprises. However, the lack of possible official accounting and evaluation leads to a negative impact on the quality and accessibility of public services, since the methods currently used are of a limited substantive nature. These are methods for assessing quality, models for quantitative generalization (description) of assessment results. Usually, local authorities, and not only assess the specific type of social services, moreover, from narrowly specialized positions using the accumulated arsenal of methods for measuring it, but the methods used to assess quality are not sufficiently formalized.
Experience and data gained for independence have shown that government reforms have potential to improve existing services and the potential for new solutions to social problems. Improving public service measures aimed to full range of services for citizens, including health (Haruna et al., 2019), education (Newcomer & Allen, 2010), criminal justice, water, electricity, information (Gil-Garcia et al., 2018), communication technologies, and any other relevant service areas by promoting the standardization of municipal and state services.
High-quality public services are crucial for the life of citizens, and ensuring their accessibility is an essential function of government agencies providing services (
works are underway to optimize the system of public services; the state has made some progress towards modernizing the system of providing municipal services in the process of optimizing systems of providing municipal services for the period 2011-2018. The main goal of the reforms is to improve the quality and accessibility of municipal services, including the option of equalizing the rights of various segments of the population to receive services, regardless of where they received.
Against the background of the above assessments, it is necessary to emphasize the need for scientific justification and development of technologies for the integrated qualimetry of services in the social sphere, as well as an awareness of the need for a single general theory and methodology. The developed theory and methodology should be open to taking into account the situational specificity of the measured objects: by their scale, by the taken form of attribution. A look at quality in the context of public services emphasizes personal satisfaction (
| Legal framework for the provision of municipal services | Detailed development of the regulatory framework is needed; regulation of the provision of municipal services |
|---|---|
| Optimization of municipal services | Even though the Basic Register of Services has been created since 2017, it is necessary to develop administrative regulations that will allow decisions to make to optimize the procedure and terms for the provision of services, as well as to differentiate powers between state authorities and local governments |
| Reception of municipal services by the principle of “Single window” | It means simplifying the receipt of municipal services, reducing the terms of provision, increasing transparency and accountability, and most importantly reducing the number of documents through the Single Window |
| Regulation and standardization of municipal services (Xie et al., 2016; Alpatov et al., 2016) | An administrative regulation should be developed, which will contain the necessary information to systematize the powers of authorities and streamline administrative procedures |
| Outsourcing of municipal services (González-Gómez et al., 2013). | It can be used as a mechanism for implementing the social functions of municipal services. World experience shows that the implementation of outsourcing will save from 10% to 50% of budget funds by increasing competition in the order sector |
| Optimization of the procedure for the provision of municipal services | The provisioning procedure should be carried out as municipal services are optimized, so at the present stage there is a problem of building an integrated system for assessing the effectiveness of municipal services |
| Creation of a quality control system for the provision of municipal services | They will allow systematizing the powers of local authorities through the development of social qualimetry, as one of the new directions in social assessment in the process of standardization of state and municipal services should be considered as a systematic observation of the interaction processes, including the assessment of services and changes in assets |
in a comprehensive assessment, which is a parameter that corrects the improvement in the quality of service. At the present stage of modernization of the provision of public services, qualimetry methods can be used. The vision of social qualimetry is that the provision of state and municipal services is becoming more transparent, more accountable, and effective. The ultimate goal is to improve the quality of management, as well as the quality of services that citizens receive.
When assessing the quality of services, it becomes necessary to take into account that one part of the quality indicators characterize the service provider: its compliance with the established norms and requirements outlined in various regulatory documents, while the other part is the perception of the quality of the service by the consumer, his satisfaction with the result of interaction with the supplier.
In Kyrgyzstan, at the present stage, the task of scientific justification and development of methods for integrated assessment of the provision and quality of public services that would guarantee the consideration of these services from a single position using such description models that reflect their general specificity has not been empirically resolved. An obvious requirement for such models is the need to consider and taken into account both indicators objectively characterizing the organization/service provider and their compliance with the requirements established for this service industry, as well as customer satisfaction indicators. Typically, requirements represented using the parameters that are non-numeric or fuzzy, which affects the argumentation of the choice of a mathematical model for their description, as well as a method for processing and analysis.
In this regard, there is a scientific need to study the development and solution of the current strategic tasks of social policy. This will make it possible to obtain information on the state, dynamics, trends of living standards, calculate them by region, by socio-demographic groups of the population, and carry out international comparisons. To assess the quality and accessibility of the services provided in the field, it should be developed using methods of social qualimetry as a single indicator of the measurement of public services.
Developed indicators will help to prioritize areas for reform to correct deficiencies and draw attention to identified problems as a result of feedback, which provides information on the quality and adequacy of services from real recipients of services aimed at improving the situation in the field of public services. There is a scientific need for the development and solution of current and strategic tasks of social policy. It is necessary to have information on the state, dynamics, and living standards, calculate them by region, by socio-demographic population groups, and carry out international comparisons. To assess the quality of the services provided locally, it is necessary to develop a single indicator that corresponds to the country’s innovative trends. It is necessary to optimize municipal services through the formation of a single basic register and standards of municipal services, the regulations for their application, as well as a social order mechanism, including the transfer of certain powers to sell social services to civil society organizations or businesses.
The results of using social qualimetry in the process of standardization of public services will benefit in improving the social policy of the state, more precisely in local governments in such areas as definition of their strengths and weaknesses in the provision of services; definition of priorities in their activities; receive specific proposals for improving services; determining the needs of the population in new types of services; bringing to the recipients of services the necessary information on the services provided; obtaining of objective information about the nature, extent, and prevalence of corruption and other hidden costs, etc. The developed methods of social qualimetry can serve as instructions in the implementation of the Regulation on the procedure for monitoring the quality of municipal services provided by local authorities of the Kyrgyz Republic developed following the Law of the Kyrgyz Republic “On Local Self-Government” and other regulatory legal acts of the Kyrgyz Republic. With the transition to a new stage of development, the quality and need of innovative approaches that correspond to the development trends of the country changes.
The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.