Abstract
The Producer-Customer Paradigm within which much of the service improvement efforts have been undertaken is a highly circumscribed and problematic paradigm for local government services. It views citizens as customers of local government services and seeks to be more efficient in its delivery through process improvements. While the Producer-Customer Paradigm has spotlighted the service delivery side of the local government, it leaves the policy making and political side of local government, so central to the nature and role of government largely beyond its scope. This artificial but politically convenient truncation or limitation has been soundly criticized in the west for distorting the role of the local citizen and the local government. Citizen satisfaction and not merely customer satisfaction is the key indicator of local government quality. An expanded service quality paradigm i.e. Government-Citizen Model is needed to place service quality within a framework of political and social values. The ultimate test of local government quality is a population which is satisfied as a user (personal satisfaction) and citizen (social satisfaction).
Highlights
Within the national governance systems, the federal government is the centre of most discussion, followed by the 13 state governments and the 144 local authorities that make the local government
The local authorities in Malaysia have grown in numbers and stature since the Dato Athi Nahappan Report and the subsequent restructuring in 1974 (Hazman, 1992), they are the weakest link in national governance system
The Ministry of Local Government and Housing has indicated many times the need for and the interest in developing one for the local government. As important as these indicators and the improvements in the services are to the local population, the nature of local government, the political and constitutional relationship between the public and local authorities (LA) and democratic ideology demands that the Producer-Customer Paradigm be transformed and expanded into a Government-Citizen Paradigm
Summary
Within the national governance systems, the federal government is the centre of most discussion, followed by the 13 state governments and the 144 local authorities that make the local government. If not all, urban citizens live in local authority administered areas. As the population becomes urbanized, local government grows in direct importance to the welfare and the quality of life experienced by a majority of the citizens of this country. LAs play two key roles at the local level that impact the lives of the local citizen. The first role relates to provision of basic services aimed at the upkeep of the local community including businesses to be found within the administrative purview. Importance of the local services that the LAs provide, they are subjected to daily barrage of questions and complaints directly in the press and through higher ups at the state and federal levels. Through the efforts of the federal government and the respective state governments, the LAs have taken a variety of measures to improve local services. Some have made significant strides in realizing some of the objectives of Local Agenda 21
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