A CITIZEN is also a voter, also a taxpayer and also a customer.
The first three “roles” are already widely known already, but very few would tend to consider a citizen as a customer.
Meanwhile, the knowledge to deliver or provide customer services has now evolved into a science called “Customer Relations Management” or CRM for short.
That is good as far as the private sector is concerned, but my wish is for the government to adopt CRM, simply by substituting “Customer” with “Citizen”.
Strictly speaking however, that may not even be necessary if we could all accept that a citizen is actually a customer.
Under ordinary circumstances, anyone is considered a customer if he or she is a “Buyer” of whatever products or services, wherein it is clearly implied that he or she is paying for the goods or services.
In a manner of speaking, it could actually be said that a citizen is a customer, because he or she is actually paying for all the public services by way of his or her taxes. As a matter of fact, there are many examples wherein a citizen actually pays for certain services, such as passports and licenses.
With that as a background, we could agree for the sake of argument that if only the government would adopt the science of CRM, we could all get a higher quality of service from all government agencies, as if these agencies are actually private companies.
Not to go too far, all Government Owned and Controlled Corporations (GOCCs) could actually adopt CRM as if they are private corporations because in truth and in fact, they are actually corporate organizations except for the fact that they are government owned rather than privately owned.
Under existing laws, it is perfectly legal for government agencies and other instrumentalities to outsource their functions to the private sector, in which case the private company involved becomes a service provider, providing certain services for and on behalf of the government.
There are many examples of that in several foreign countries, wherein certain services such as jail management and customs administration are already outsourced.
Crude as they may be, security guards and janitorial services are already outsourced in practically all government agencies./PN
