Debated in Parliament on 5 Jul 2022.
Ms Foo Mee Har asked the Prime Minister (a) whether service standards by Government agencies have been affected when civil servants work from home; and (b) whether this has been verified by tracking residents' feedback on service quality rendered by Government agencies.
The Public Service has had to adopt new ways of working over the last two years due to COVID-19. In line with the national posture to prevent the spread of the virus and keep employees and the citizens they serve safe, Public Service agencies had implemented arrangements, such as work-from-home and split teams. To ensure that services were not disrupted even as they had to reduce physical interactions with citizens, agencies had to switch quickly towards hybrid ways of delivering services, leveraging more on call centres and digital service delivery.
Throughout the pandemic, the Public Service continues to monitor service levels and conduct citizen satisfaction surveys at both the agency and whole-of-Public-Service levels. In 2020, slight dips were observed in service levels for call centre services while satisfaction for digital services were maintained. Overall citizen satisfaction for service delivery showed a drop, although the satisfaction level showed signs of recovery towards the end of 2020 and into 2021. These results are not surprising, given the surge in calls when physical services had to be reduced within short notice and the heightened anxieties from citizens during the pandemic. Furthermore, the Public Service workforce was stretched thin as officers also had to be diverted to staff up new COVID-19-related operations urgently.
Moving forward, the Public Service will continue to uphold high standards of service delivery. Hybrid workplaces and service delivery are expected to be a feature in the new normal, post COVID-19. The past two years’ experience has provided us some useful learning. We will continue with efforts to organise and train our service workforce and leverage technology towards improving and integrating physical, digital and call centre services around our citizens to serve them better.
PAPERCUTS