Some 20 years after the fall of communism, the elements of the culture of public service providers traditionally associated with civil societies are still not rooted deeply enough in Hungarian society. In their strategies, public service providers have typically failed to pay sufficient attention to consciously improving their service culture. Service development has tended to focus on technology and IT, rather than the soft elements of service culture that are manifested in the interactions between the service staff and citizens using the services. In most cases, the development of the competences of the service staff lacked any definite concept and has thus failed to attain the desired impact. However, as far as service users are concerned, a remarkable distance was also observed between people’s expectations concerning the culture of services compared to the standard of requirements in mature civil societies.
The 70 000 inhabitants of Szolnok should feel and experience that the 33 public service providers serving them and the 96 organisations underlying these public service providers are trustworthy in the provision of their services. This includes paying attention to their individual characteristics, paying special attention to disadvantaged groups and ensuring partnership, a transparent operation and the related dialogue. To that end, public service providers should improve their service culture on the basis of the same values through urban integration, support and incentives.
This is why the Service City model was developed by the Homo Regius Consulting Agency with a purpose:
- to encourage the actions intending to improve the culture of public services at the public service organisations operating in the city, including in particular the maintenance of organisational culture;
- to coordinate, at city level, the actions intending to improve the culture of public services;
- to provide city-level programmes to improve the value-oriented service culture of public service providers;
- to implement city-level development action based on the findings of expectation and satisfaction surveys among the local community (service users).
The model specifies the concepts of ‘service’ and ‘service culture’. By services, it means the satisfaction of non-physical needs, where the transaction takes place between the service provider and the service user (customer/client/partner) within their relationships, regardless of whether the service user is a natural person or a legal entity. Service culture, on the other hand, includes the essential characteristics of the manner and circumstances of the satisfaction of needs, which require ‘transparency’, ‘openness’ and ‘accountability’. Most of these characteristics are associated with human actions.
In recognition of the development of the model, the Service City model was awarded the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Committed to Excellence Award in 2009. Despite the award, the model had never been tested in practice before it arrived in Szolnok. It therefore represented a real asset where, acting as an integrating cohesion partner, the city integrated the 35 supporting public service organisations. In cooperation with the project office run by the proprietor of the model, the values of service culture were fine-tuned and the tools designed for their measurement assessed, signalling the launch of the Service City Szolnok pilot project.
For the model applied, it presented a genuine methodological challenge that the partners among the organisations representing the diversity of life and the operation of the city in the broad sense could accurately define. The specific features of each organisation should be visible, and the comparability of the public service providers should be ensured.
It was an indication of the sincerity of the project culture that the public service providers revealed their diverse motivations for supporting the project. Their motives included the need for the conscious improvement of service culture, the sense that ‘one was not supposed to be left out’ and the recognition of the opportunity to learn from each other. The launch of the pilot project was met with appreciation in Hungary. It was recognised by the special innovation award of the Hungarian Association of Management Consultants, the Hungarian organisation representing the European Federation of Management Consultancies Associations (FEACO). The award was granted to the City of Szolnok and the Homo Regius Consulting Agency.