The unheard voices: Citizens’ enquiries as a source for improving public services

In the development and continuous improvement of digital public services, a citizen-centred approach is considered essential. Citizens’ opinions and needs are often gathered through interviews, focus groups, and user tests. While these approaches provide valuable insights, they typically arise from constructed situations rather than from actual usage contexts. In addition, they only involve citizens who are motivated and have the energy to participate. Many citizens – especially those who struggle most with the services – lack this capacity, resulting in many voices going unheard. But how can public sector organisations gain insight into the problems these citizens face, and how can these insights be integrated into service development and improvement? In this ongoing research paper, we present the outline of a recently initiated project in which we will analyse the potential of citizen enquiries as a source for developing and continuously improving digital public services. We argue that public sector organisations hold significant, yet untapped, data on citizens’ problems with public services. When citizens encounter challenges with digital public services, they often contact public sector organisations via telephone, in person, in writing, or through chat. In addition to textual communication, frontline workers, caseworkers, and advisors hold important knowledge as they act as the bridge between citizens and public sector organisations, gathering direct and unfiltered information on user challenges. The aim of this project is to explore how a systematic use of these citizen enquiries – both in terms of citizens’ messages and frontline workers’ knowledge – can be integrated into the development process of digital public services, and, thus, give a voice to the hitherto unheard voices.