Public participation and its impact on the public service quality in Algeria -A field study -

Abstract

We assume that public participation lies in improving the performance of public facilities and obtaining citizen satisfaction by focusing on them and making them the main accent of the function, not only as a user but as a partner in how it is designed and how it is presented. This study discusses the impact of public participation as a participatory mechanism on the quality of public service provided in Algeria through a field survey among a group of citizens distributed across the various wilayas and municipalities of Algeria, with the aim of determining the level of public satisfaction with the quality of services provided and measuring public participation in the field of public service through a pre-defined set of indicators represented in: - The indicator of the use of ICT and social media; - Community participation index; - And the participatory evaluation indicator. This was done on the assumption that enabling the various actors to participate in the decision-making process at the level of public utilities allows enhancing the ability of these utilities to produce a high quality public service. It was concluded in this study that despite the various actors’ awareness of the importance of public participation in improving the quality of public service and the availability of some mechanisms that allow for an increase in the volume of participation, but the weakness of public participation indicators proved, on the practical level, that the outputs required from the public participation process did not achieve sufficient satisfaction for citizens, and this due to the limitations of these mechanisms in the actual embodiment of public participation in the field of public service design