The Value of Irreducibles in the Planning of Service Systems

The research reported in this paper is the result of an attempt to investigate whether analytic techniques can be devised for aiding public administrators in their tasks of making decisions on the design of public service physical facilities. It questions the current practice of using prescriptive formulas that do not explicitly take into account the needs of a community on whose behalf the decisions are made. Then it proposes methods for quantifying decisions currently made and for improving these decisions. Specifically, the paper treats the problem of a criterion that is a two-dimensional vector function with each dimension considered as a measure of a resource expended for the provision and use of a service facility. The quality of service rendered by the facility is a function of the quantity of each one of these two resources used. Since, in general, each community needs, or can afford, a different quality of service, the optimum combination of resources employed will vary from one community to another. The methodology developed in this paper proposes that the actual decisions made by public administrators in regard to the design of service facilities be used as a basis for making commensurate the two dimensions of the cost criterion. It then proposes techniques for aiding administrators in improving their decisions. The proposed methodology is intended to be applicable within the framework of the current value systems of public administrators and it recognizes the limits on their computational capacities and access to information.