BANTAY
GOBYERNO
Ike Señeres
At the risk of stating the obvious, I would
still say that a citizen is also a voter, also a taxpayer and also a customer.
The first three “roles” are already widely known already, but very few would
tend to consider a citizen as a customer. Meanwhile, the knowledge to deliver
or provide customer services has now evolved into a science called “Customer
Relations Management” or CRM for short.
That is good as far as
the private sector is concerned, but my wish is for the government to adopt
CRM, simply by substituting “Customer” with “Citizen”. Strictly speaking
however, that may not even be necessary if we could all accept that a citizen
is actually a customer. Under ordinary circumstances, anyone is considered a
customer if he or she is a “Buyer” of whatever products or services, wherein it
is clearly implied that he or she is paying for the goods or services.
In a manner of speaking,
it could actually be said that a citizen is a customer, because he or she is
actually paying for all the public services by way of his or her taxes. As a
matter of fact, there are many examples wherein a citizen actually pays for
certain services, such as passports and licenses.
With that as a
background, we could agree for the sake of argument that if only the government
would adopt the science of CRM, we could all get a higher quality of service
from all government agencies, as if these agencies are actually private
companies. Not to go too far, all Government Owned and Controlled Corporations
(GOCCs) could actually adopt CRM as if they are private corporations because in
truth and in fact, they are actually corporate organizations except for the
fact that they are government owned rather than privately owned.
Under existing laws, it
is perfectly legal for government agencies and other instrumentalities to
outsource their functions to the private sector, in which case the private
company involved becomes a service provider, providing certain services for and
on behalf of the government. There are many examples of that in several foreign
countries, wherein certain services such as jail management and customs
administration are already outsourced. Crude as they may be, security guards
and janitorial services are already outsourced in practically all government
agencies. In theory, it could actually be said that other government functions
such as market research and database management could already be outsourced.
Hopefully, government agencies would eventually be able to compare the costs if
they are confronted with the options to in-source or outsource.
The theory behind
outsourcing is that the services provided by the contractors should be cheaper
and better, two concepts that could be interpreted as either being efficient or
effective, as the case may be. What that means is that the government would
actually end up as the winner, because the delivery of services would cost
lesser, and the quality would be higher.
Generally speaking, it
could be said that the quality of in-sourcing would be lower, because the
agencies that would provide the services would not have a profit motive.
Conversely, the outsourcing providers are driven by profit motives. A good
example of this would be jail management, wherein the private sector could
probably provide services that are not only cheaper, but are also more secure,
aside from having more nutritious food. Ideally, the scope of jail management
should also include rehabilitation, the real purpose of being jailed.
Although I said that CRM
is a science, the real science behind it now is Information and Communications
Technology (ICT), now usually in the form of websites or mobile apps. As it is
happening now, many mobile apps have website versions, and vice versa.
Regardless of what form it takes, ICT software should be well designed in terms
of “User Interface” (UI) and “User Experience” (UX), with the goal in mind of
having the best CRM by having the best customer engagement.
Yes, customer engagement
is really the name of the game, and the object of the game is customer
satisfaction. Although it may sound like I am going around in circles, I am
actually going direct to my point, and my point is that government agencies,
just like private corporations, should now adopt CRM software with superior UI
and UX built into it, for the sake of the highest customer satisfaction.
It is not true that a
career government employee could never be removed from office for whatever
reason. The truth is that he or she could only be removed if there is a
reasonable cause, and if there is due process. As it is now, most government
agencies are already implementing their own performance rating standards.
While that may be a good start, the next step
should be to correlate individual scores with the collective customer
satisfaction ratings. If the ratings are low, it would imply that the customers
(read as citizens) are not happy with the services provided.
Somehow, some ways, the
Filipino people would ultimately realize that they have the power not only as
citizens and customers to rate the services of government agencies, they also
have the power to dictate their fund sources as taxpayers and voters, at least
in theory.
For feedback email iseneres@yahoo.com or
text +639083159262
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