Quality of Public Services in the Territories of Donetsk and Luhansk Regions Controlled by Ukraine

Volodymyr Kipen and Natalija Nykyforenko

A chapter in Recent Advances in Public Sector Management from IntechOpen

Abstract: Relevance of the study of access to quality public services of the population living in the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts controlled by the Government of Ukraine is due to the high level of social vulnerability caused by the ongoing military conflict in eastern Ukraine and the ambiguous consequences of decentralization reform, as well as the introduction of quarantine restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of the work is to analyze the quality of services provided by public authorities and local governments to residents of the government-controlled territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, based on focus group interviews. Processed information on the range of available public services in these locations defines the most popular services and barriers to their delivery and criteria for assessing the activities of residents of public service entities, as well as ways to improve the quality of those services. The influence of the spatial factor on ensuring the quality of public services is significant. Due to the manifestations of crisis consciousness, formed in living conditions near the zone of military conflict, residents are not too demanding as to the quality of services and react mainly to cases of long-term lack of services, vital for life support. There are no clear criteria for assessing the quality of public services in their collective mindset. The availability of public services (the actual possibility of obtaining them at the place of residence) and the transparency of the authorities' activities that provide them are essential. For the most part, residents do not feel their responsibility for the quality of services. The influence of the spatial factor on ensuring the quality of public services is significant is revealed. The study showed the expediency of focusing the efforts of local authorities and the "third sector" on the formation of appropriate client competence of public service recipients controlled by Ukraine areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, in particular, of the full range of services available in situ, the conditions and mechanisms for their provision, the powers of local governments, the nature and essence of relations between the subjects of public services); on the development of instruments of "participatory democracy" and public control of power mechanisms. The prospects for improving the management of public services in the direction of further devolution and modernization of service delivery mechanisms through technological and depersonalization of processes, principles of "single window," efficiency, transparency, and customer-tailored orientation are outlined.

Keywords: public services; availability of services; quality of services; public authorities; local governments; focus group interviews; territories controlled by the government of Ukraine (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ito:pchaps:330427

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.115100

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