John I'm struggling a little with this.
The EC model feels massively over-simplified to me (just look at the reductionist, linear view of the relationship between policy, service and legislation).
I could probably list lots which is missing, but it would be helpful first to have a clearer idea of what the purpose of this model is: who are the intended users of it, and what value is intended to deliver to them?
Does the EC have some sort of statement of objectives for the work?
If we could see that, it would help in giving more focused comments.
The UK model Nig has circulated will clearly be helpful to the EC in adding detail, but it feels to me that the two things are trying to do something different: the UK document feels like it is providing a menu of defined concepts which could be brought together to describe any service, whereas the EC work is trying not simply to provide a menu but a generic model of how all the concepts fit together and interrelate for a generic service.
Doing so is clearly going to be a challenge.
Having said that, my initial reactions about major gaps in the EC model include: · The customers for the service.
At present these are packaged into a single box called “community”, which the public service “targets”.
Nothing about the need for a service to understand customer needs and circumstances, and how these vary and sub-segment.
And nothing which recognises the idea of a two way relationship in service design and service delivery, with eg citizen co-creation of service.
Similarly, nothing which recognises that some customers for some services will be anonymous, but in other cases the service will need to identify safely who the customer is (opening up the whole set of identity management issues).
· Channels for service delivery.
Nothing on this in the current model except the idea that each service has “a site”.
Does that mean a website?
The implication of the way “public service” is described in the central box (with homepage and url) is that this is focused solely on e-services.
But even if that is the intention, we still need to recognise the existence of multiple channels, along with the idea that users want not simply to choose between channels, but to move between them on a single service experience · Relationships with other services.
Worth recognising somewhere in this that services do not exist in isolation, particularly when viewed from a customer perspective – where a number of services may need to be integrated in order to meet a single customer need.
And of course the wider service universe encompasses not just public but also private and voluntary sectors.
· Outcomes of the service.
Like you say, benefit realisation is not here, other than the recognition that a process should generate an output.
We also need to show how outputs create public value, both directly for the users of a service and indirectly through generation of externalities, and how these benefits impact on the policy outcomes being targeted for the service.
Some of these issues have been addressed in another bit of UK work, focused at local government level, which doesn’t yet seem to have been picked up by the project team working on the EC model See the “local government business model” at http://standards.esd.org.uk/LGBMDiagram.aspx .
Even this though feels to me like it fails the “so what?” test.
Which brings me back to the question of what all this is for!
Regards, Chris Parker Managing Partner CS Transform Limited www.cstransform.com T: +44 7951 754060 F: +44 207 681 3908 Citizen Service Transformation
