New Forms of Public Service Delivery – are they really valuable?

One of the major challenges currently faced by Public Administrations is the creation of more value for both citizens and firms, mainly because of the increasing budgetary constraints and challenging demands from society. In fact, in the last two decades there has been a general movement of public reform in almost all developed countries, and for this reason it became essential to understand how users assess public services’ quality. This paper aims precisely at understanding which the determinants of public services’ quality are. Due to the nature of the research problem, the case-study methodology has been chosen. Thus, this paper presents the case-study of Citizen Shops in Portugal, a recent and innovative channel of public services’ delivery, within a strong relational perspective. This research involved an extensive qualitative and quantitative data collection. The main findings and implications are presented and discussed.