Using Survey Information To Provide Evaluative Citizen Feedback For Public Service Decisions

Abstract

Public opinion polls or surveys of public opinion are used across the world for many reasons, from estimating election results to citizen report cards. While survey results are reported and shared with the public, they are also used to help make policy decisions about public service delivery. This paper focuses on the use of performance information obtained from citizens to help make decisions about resource allocations and improving service delivery. Special challenges in conducting surveys and uses of survey-based performance indicators are presented. Performance data have little value and remain underutilized if nothing is done with the information. Survey results give information on what is working and what is not. The cost of not getting this feedback and evaluating how services affect citizens far outweighs the cost of conducting surveys.

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Introduction

Public opinion polls are defined as a survey of public opinion from a specific sample that is usually designed to be representative of the opinions of the population. Surveys have been used to obtain information from the public for decades, with some accounts of the earliest scientific based-survey being done by Gallup in 1936. Since then, surveys have been used for many purposes. This paper focuses on the use of survey information obtained from citizens to help make decisions about public service delivery.

In recent years, many national and local governments around the world have been pressed to measure and report the results of their services. This measurement is intended to make government agencies more accountable and to provide information to government managers for improving the effectiveness of their services. Surveys of citizens have become a major data collection tool for obtaining evaluative date on the quality and effectiveness of public programs. They have become widely used in many countries both (a) to evaluate specific public programs in special studies (called "program evaluations"), and (b) to provide regular information for performance measurement systems used as part of "managing for results" (also called "results-based management" or even "performance-based budgeting systems").

Benefits of Conducting Surveys. Surveys of citizens (and of the customers of public services) are often the only technique available to obtain accurate data for certain outcomes (results) of services. Such surveys have become popular tools for obtaining data from citizens include focus group discussions and tracking citizen complaints. Though useful, focus group discussions and complaints do not provide public officials with data that are likely to be sufficiently representative of the population. Many people will not know how to complain to the government, may fear retaliation, do not want anything to do with the government, or may not feel it would do any good to complain. Exhibit 1 provides a list of the many types of information that government agencies, or nongovernmental organizations can get from surveys.

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