Picking a Development Reform Agenda through Service Analysis

The Business Dictionary (http://www.businessdictionary.com) defines a Service as “A valuable action, deed, or effort performed to satisfy a need or to fulfill a demand”.  Social, economic and political institutions were established to perform actions to satisfy needs; in other words, to provide services. Failure to provide services effectively leads to undesired conditions (e.g., malnutrition, inefficient industries, low rate of land titling) which attract the attention of Development Reformists.

It does not take much for a Development Reformists to know that something is broken somewhere, and needs to be fixed. It takes much effort to find out exactly what is broken, how it is broken, and how it can be fixed. The answers to these questions comprise a set of possible Development Reform agendas, which can be filtered further by the twin lenses of technical soundness and political feasibility.

Is there a systematic way to generate ideas for reform? This blog suggests that since failures and shortcomings in service delivery contribute to undesirable social, political and economic conditions, systematic service analysis can be used to generate ideas for reform. 

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The first challenge is to identify the services that are critical to the dire condition that needs reform. These services may be delivered by one institution, or by several. The reformist can pick an institution that is within her area of influence, because with them she will have more chances of bringing about reform. Then she can pick one service that has the most impact on the condition that she wants to alleviate.

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Once this service has been identified, it should be described it in terms of:

• Objective: What condition will the delivery of this service bring about? What is its impact on community development?
• Legal basis: what is the formal rule behind the delivery of this service?
• Customer/s - Who are the individuals or groups who will benefit from this service?
• Provider/s within the Office - Who are the specific employees or officials involved in delivering this service?
• Service Standards - what Time, Quality, Quantity, Cost and Customer Satisfaction standards have to be met for the service to be successful delivered?

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Service analysis starts with revisiting the objective/s of the service (e.g., is the service objective related to our mandate? Do the conditions that necessitated this service still exist?), legal basis (e.g., is this formal rule still in effect?), customers (e.g., are they the people who really need  this service?), providers (e.g., are they the best persons in the organization to provide this service?), and service standards (e.g., are these realistic? will meeting these standards meet the needs of the customers?).

Questioning these basic attributes of the service can already produce ideas for reform. For example, if the service is no longer needed under current conditions, doing away with the service can be considered. If the a Service Standard does not meet current demand - meaning, even if the standard is met, customers’ needs will still be unmet - then revising these standards could be an area for reform. 

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Step two is validating actual service performance parameters against the ideal. This applies to Customers (are the intended customers receiving the service, or are other groups benefiting from it?), Providers (is the service being provided by the people who are supposed to be doing so, or is another person or group doing the work?), and Service Standards (are the Quantity, Quality, Cost, Time, and Customer Satisfaction standards being met?).

Comparing the ideal against what is really going on can lead to more ideas about the objectives of reform - though not necessarily how that reform can be achieved. 

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The answer to “how” can be found through the third step: documentation and review of the groups of activities and, within each group, of specific processes. The former is done by studying the “Work Breakdown Structure”, the latter through “Process Flow Analysis”. These tools may be old-school, but they’re still quite effective.

It is possible that the WBS and the Process Flow have already been documented (Process Flows are displayed in most Government offices, as required by ARTA). In this case, validation through actual observation is the logical next step. If the WBS and Process Flows have not been documented yet, observation of the actual processes is also necessary.

Critical analysis follows. A practical approach would be to analyze each WBS component in terms of how they relate or contribute to Service parameters and Standards, then to focus on the component that seems to be affecting service performance most. This is followed by detailed, step-by-step analysis of the process flow for that component.

By the end of this process, the analyst could have a number of ideas for service improvement or reform. These ideas could be ranked in terms of technical soundness and political feasibility. The idea that meets these criteria can be pursued as the reform agenda.

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What are the social, economic or political conditions that you want to do something about?

Which institutions are providing services relevant to these conditions? Which of these institutions can you influence?

What is the particular service provided by this institution that you think should be improved?