Evaluation of Public Service Delivery by Russians: Results of 2011-2015 Sociological Surveys

The article presents both the methodology and the results of the annual perception surveys on public service delivery undertaken by the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration under the RF President (RANEPA) in 2011-2015. The subject of the surveys comprised all public services rendered by the state and municipal authorities to individuals and firms (administrative public services). At the federal level, over 600 types of such services are provided ranging from issuing ID cards and processing tax returns to registering property and allocating welfare payments. The services provided by state-funded entities (such as schools or hospitals) or state-owned enterprises were outside the scope of the survey. The study aimed at evaluating the administrative reform eff orts on improving quality of public service delivery.The survey method was face-to-face interviews with the results comparable over time; the statistical error ranged from 2.5 percent in 2011 to 1 percent in 2015.The survey respondents were adult Russian citizens who had applied for an administrative service during the study period (1-2 years prior to the survey date) and, by the time of the interview, had obtained the result. The fact of the application and the type of the service have been recorded during the survey.The survey results demonstrate improvements: the percentage of respondents rating the overall quality of the public service delivery as very good and rather good has grown from 74.6 percent in 2011 to 83.8 percent in 2015. The average queueing time reduced from 54.7 minutes in 2012 to 35.7 minutes in 2015. For the past fi ve years, the satisfaction rate with queueing time has grown by 15.4 p.p., while the satisfaction with the term of public service has risen by 11.2 p.p. The percentage of respondents noting poor conditions in public premises has dropped three times while the percentage of those applying to numerous offices has decreased twofold in the past five years. Introducing the one stop shops and developing e-services have contributed to these positive results. The remaining challenges include further reductions of queues, decreasing the number of documents needed for application, and improving timeliness in public service delivery. These priorities should be taken into account to achieve the target set by the RF President (90 percent satisfaction rate by 2018).The survey results are reviewed by the RF Government Administrative Reform Commission annually. The results of the 2015 survey have not been published.