About SET

Background

Besides infrastructure creation and production such as those for schools, roads, hospitals, agriculture and livestock products, etc., public service delivery also involves administering a wide array of softer services related to permits, clearances, census, registration, renewals, amongst others. These services, often referred to as the Commonly Availed Services (CAS), provide citizens with an interface to interact with public sector organizations, placing its delivery channels and service outcomes as vital avenues for building trust in the government. Therefore, it is vital to ensure that interactions at designated service centres are as efficient and effective as possible to improve service delivery.

Conventionally, the relationship between service providers and citizens is unidirectional and linear in nature, wherein public agencies act solely as ‘providers’ and citizens simply as ‘receivers’, perhaps resulting in a four-decades-old provider-controlled service delivery system. To reposition the role of providers and citizens into a two-way constructive process, the Royal Civil Service Commission under the Public Service Delivery (PSD) initiative embarked on the journey to improve public service delivery by engaging citizens in its monitoring and assessment process. In doing so, in 2021 RCSC has co-designed a Service Evaluation Tool (SET) to use the feedback and insights gathered from service users to further enhance service delivery.

About Service Evaluation Tool (SET)

SET aims to provide a web-based platform for citizens to rate the quality of service delivery. It has two main objectives:

1. Engage service users in improving the service delivery through the provision of feedback
2. Enable a near real-time feedback collection and dashboard generation

SET Tool comprises of three feedback channels:

1. Take an open survey: This survey is based on the SET Tool questionnaire and is open for any service user who would like to share their experiences with regard to the quality of service delivery.

There is also a targeted survey. For you to be part of the targeted survey, you would firstly have to avail a service and secondly be selected by the system as one of the randomly selected respondents. Once you are selected as a sample respondent, SET Tool will facilitate collection of near-real-time data by nudging service users through:

SMS survey: You will receive an SMS notification that will link you up with the online SET questionnaire. Please, take some time to rate the service in case this happens.
CATI survey: An interviewer will be reaching out to you and will carry out Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) using the SET questionnaire to gather your experience with regard to the service quality.

2. Share feedback: This is an open ended channel for any citizen to provide specific feedback on the service availed. Both positive and negative feedback are encouraged.

3. Take a poll: This is an open access poll for citizens to share their perceptions and insights on various matters related to service delivery quality.

The Service Evaluation Tool (SET) questionnaire captures 10 indicators that are categorised under the following five parameters:

The survey is based on a structured questionnaire capturing 10 indicators categorised under the following five parameters

Each of the 10 indicators run on a 5 point Likert scale with 1 representing the lowest possible score and 5 as the highest possible score.

The ratings collected based on the 10 indicators will be aggregated into a composite score to indicate an overall satisfaction level of a specific service provided by a specific agency. The data collected on the platform will allow relevant agencies to access real-time analytics and dashboards for effective and informed decision-making.

The survey is based on a structured questionnaire capturing 10 indicators categorised under the following five parameters

Accessibility

Timeliness

Attitude

Integrity

Feedback

The parameter emphasizes the principle of information sharing on processes involved in accessing services. It also aims to evaluate the facility layout and design of the service centre as to how easy it would be to locate it by the service users.

The parameter aims to evaluate the time taken by service users to receive the service. Waiting time is one of the two measures of the parameter. Excessive waiting times may affect not only the perception of the quality of the service but also the expected impact of the service. Likewise, the other measure, which is turnaround time, refers to the processing time starting from the time they reached out to a service provider in a service centre.

An appropriate attitude of frontline employees positively influences the level of service user engagement. The parameter focuses on assessing basic etiquette principles that service providers would need to apply when interacting with their users, such as displaying a welcoming attitude and courtesy amongst others.

The parameter aims to evaluate the service provider’s level of commitment to integrity, fairness, and transparency by providing equal access to services to every kind of service user without any biases and prejudices.

Feedback channels provide service users with the freedom to provide open and honest reactions, which can be referred for service delivery improvement. The parameter provides avenues to assess if there are adequate feedback channels and whether service users are open to providing feedback.