Monitoring of the quality of state and municipal services provision: methodology and implementation experience

The article presents key results of the monitoring of the quality of public and municipal services, carried out in the south of the Tyumen Oblast by the Department of Common and Economic Sociology of Tyumen State University for two years. The authors give a brief analysis of the existing approaches to the study of the quality of public and municipal services, analyze methodologies used by other research teams and single out possible research strategies. The article describes the authors’ research methodology, which implies the use of complex quantitative and qualitative research methods such as surveys of services consumers, surveys of the experts involved in the services provision, monitoring of the service provision process, focus groups and sample purchases. Each method studies different aspects of the problem. The research focuses on various aspects of accessibility and quality of public and municipal services: management of the process of informing consumers, territorial accessibility of services, comfort conditions of services provision, terms of services provision and waiting in the queues, consumers’ general impression from the services provision process. The methodology was applied in the 2011-2012 research, with the authors having taken part in it. The article discloses their results and the authors’ recommendations, developed on their basis.