Focusing on the Citizen
– Political Embeddedness, Administrative Consideration and Distributive Consequences of Citizens' Service Centres in Denmark
Lene Holm Petersen, June 2009, AKF
Summary
Today, nearly all local authorities in Denmark have established citizens’ service centres, and such service is, in many respects, deeply embedded in the civic structure. Many municipalities have already formulated a service policy for such centres and many more have one planned. In the same way, citizen-oriented services are a very common feature of municipal strategic planning. This report is based on a nationwide poll carried out among the centre managers. According to them, it is the chief executives of local authorities who set greatest store by citizens’ service, elected councillors placing slightly less – although still considerable – emphasis on the concept. A variation across administrative areas can also be seen. Citizen service gets the highest rating in the social sector of the municipality, where 41% of those asked rate it as most important. The corresponding figure was 28% in the children and young people’s sector, 26% for the environmental and technical sector and 20% for the financial sector. On that background, citizen service can be considered to have become firmly embedded at local authority level, although it could be more widespread within certain administrative fields.Centre leaders were asked in the poll to rank a number of administrative requirements. They considered that the values which should be most priority were modernisation, efficiency and co-ordination, while specialisation and geographic placement had less priority. Most matters can be dealt with in the centres, so these are, in a sense, one-stop shops where the services the citizen needs are concentrated in one place. By far the major part of the centres’ work consists of the provision of information, followed by simple administrative tasks, case work and, to a lesser extent, advisory tasks. The matters concentrated in the centres are thus very much things that the citizen needs. This also means that the centres tend to focus on a particular type of citizen. Those who physically turn up at the centres are in the main elderly citizens with a fair amount of time. In addition, a large part of the centres’ case work is done on the internet or over the phone. Since the establishment of service centres, the average citizen appears to have experienced an improvement in the level of service provided by his local authority. It is, however, interesting that another citizen-oriented initiative, the setting up of a municipal watchdog function, has spread more slowly. The watchdog function is intended to help citizens in conflict with the system over complicated issues. Given this background, the question arises as to which type of citizen is now in focus after the establishment of service centres.
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