Supply and Demand Sides of Public Service Delivery in Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia

Abstract

Supply and Demand Sides of Public Service Delivery in Oromia Regional State

The citizen's standard of living and consciousness is demanding effective service delivery which needs appropriate response from both Demand and Supply sides within this ever growing demanding society World. Service effectiveness on the side of government is mandatory to create sustainable public trust. The study was focused on the supply and demand sides of service delivery in National Regional State of Oromia conducted on two purposely selected towns namely, Shashemene and Haromaya. The principal objective of the research is to explore the regional sectors effectiveness of service delivery from both supply and demand sides. The study analyzed the supply side from the perspective of implementation capacity of organizations and the demand side focused on four dimensions - transparency, accountability, responsiveness, and voicing mechanisms. Both qualitative and quantitative research designs were used to conduct the study. To collect the primary data, survey questionnaire has been administered for 60 customers and 60 officers of government organizations (Health sector, Education sector, Social Service Sector, Land Administration, Water and Sewerage, Electric Power Service and Civil Service and Good Governance Offices). In addition, secondary data were collected from different public service providing organizations to elaborate the present situation and the existing gap. Accordingly, the result showed that the accountability and responsiveness dimensions were found to be the most important, while transparency and voicing mechanism were the least important factors contributed for the existed gap on demand side; and lack of implementing capacity on the supply side. With this finding, the study concluded that, there is significant gap between the actual service provision and demand; and expectation of the society which resulted in customer's dissatisfaction on the government organizations service delivery. Thus, it was recommended that, the government organizations needs to improve their effective service delivery in the entire dimensions, especially on accountability, responsiveness and capacity building.