Rising citizen expectations have made efficient, relevant, quality public sector services the key government ‘products’ requested by public service ‘customers’. In the Arab world, enhancing the quality, efficiency and accessibility of public sector services requires government institutions to apply creative approaches to service design and delivery processes. Fostering a citizencentric culture in the design and delivery of public services in the Arab region can potentially create new and locally-fitting solutions to public services challenges, as well as improving quality of services related to education, unemployment, and social affairs among others.
Despite the wide acceptance of the need for enhanced services in the Arab World, efforts to understand the intricacies
of public service development are limited, especially on a regional level. For this reason, the Governance and Innovation Program at the Mohammed bin Rashid School of Government conducted regional research examining the state of public services in the Arab world. This report aims to improve understanding of public service delivery in the Arab region by providing a broad view of service delivery environments, outputs and enablers; as well as regional challenges and strengths, and the overall quality of public services in the Arab world.
This report is comprised of two main components*:
• The results of a survey of key official Arab government entities which focused on internal service delivery activities of government organizations.
• The results of an Arab regional ‘customer’ satisfaction survey which focused on customer experience and satisfaction with public services.
While Arab countries share many traits, challenges and opportunities in terms of service delivery, there is clear diversity in many environmental contexts affecting the public sector.
Factors such as wealth, population sizes, geography, and social conditions affect service delivery in each of these countries differently. As such, the analysis of the regional findings was supplanted with an analysis of survey findings across three groups -using Gross National Product (GNP) classifications used by the World Bank 1-2:
• Lower-middle income: Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco, Palestine, Sudan, Syria, Yemen
• Upper-Middle income: Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia
• High income: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE