Make public administration more empathic and citizens more active

Public administration is one of the most important areas to promote digital citizenship development. Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) through online surveys concerning relevant issues can be one of the most important tools for public institutions to enter the 21st century,being able to listen to the citizens, to promote participation, and to create new local models of democracy.

Public institutions in many countries are organized from the institution’s point of view, with the interests of the people working there in mind – and with the citizens’ needs too often coming in at the bottom of this imaginary hierarchy. The experiences and opinions of the citizens are important assets for every public administrator who needs to know the needs and the ideas of each and every citizen. The importance of gathering citizen experience related to public services such as schools, health care, public transportation and other city services that daily affect citizens’ quality of life, cannot be stressed enough. This also goes for services offered by privately held companies with public impact. Important changes in the city organization and public events should also be assessed on citizen satisfaction.

Comune di Roma Capitale

In Comune di Roma Capitale (Rome municipality) – one of the largest European capitals – Mr. Luigi Di Gregorio, the director of the Communication Department, is using feedback to develop a relationship with the over 130.000 citizens who are logged in to the “online services” area of  the official website of this important public institution. They started from a citizen satisfaction survey on the online services  to print official municipality certificates at home, to evaluate the citizen experience using these services and the changes to be proposed on these services. Feedback management is  now one of the most important tools in developing new strategies in communication about public services and the relationship with the citizens using these services.

Citizen loyalty

Measuring these experiences and gathering feedback means to promote  citizen loyalty towards public administration – nurturing the feeling of being listened to.
Many of 21st century societies are currently living a period of cultural and economic crisis and the feeling to be part of a community remains one of the strongest left from the fall of ideologies and of religious faith.

All areas of public administration can use EFM to improve their processes and knowledge:

• Citizen satisfaction with public services
• Citizen opinion about the activities of public institutions
• How citizens live the changes public administration promotes
• Ideas and comments to develop new strategies and new projects in different areas

EFM is a way to promote more dynamic public institutions, pushing them to act and pushing them to take decisions according to the citizens’ experiences.  Last but not least, satisfied and well motivated public workers  usually deliver more satisfying services to citizens.  For this reason it is important to measure also internal satisfaction in public administration.

Feedback as an e-government tool is the way to develop a new model of citizenship and to create a more empathic public administration.