Application of Natural Language Processing to Determine User Satisfaction in Public Services

Research on customer satisfaction has increased substantially in recent years. However, the relative importance and relationships between different determinants of satisfaction remains uncertain. Moreover, quantitative studies to date tend to test for significance of pre-determined factors thought to have an influence with no scalable means to identify other causes of user satisfaction. The gaps in knowledge make it difficult to use available knowledge on user preference for public service improvement. Meanwhile, digital technology development has enabled new methods to collect user feedback, for example through online forums where users can comment freely on their experience. New tools are needed to analyze large volumes of such feedback. Use of topic models is proposed as a feasible solution to aggregate open-ended user opinions that can be easily deployed in the public sector. Generated insights can contribute to a more inclusive decision-making process in public service provision. This novel methodological approach is applied to a case of service reviews of publicly-funded primary care practices in England. Findings from the analysis of 145,000 reviews covering almost 7,700 primary care centers indicate that the quality of interactions with staff and bureaucratic exigencies are the key issues driving user satisfaction across England

Livestock farming with care : summaries of essays

Wageningen UR is the country’s major research organisation in the field of livestock farming, providing the knowledge base for innovative livestock farming in our country and beyond and, as such, keen to play a role in the above mentioned debate. To this end an interdisciplinary task force was formed embodying a range of expertise, from livestock technology to system analysis and from economics to public administration. As one of the task force activities, Wageningen UR colleagues were invited to write an essay with their vision on specific aspects of this debate, based on their views and expertise. The result was a series of 30 essays, providing a wide overview of relevant issues with possible directions for solutions

The Global Dimension of the EU’s AFSJ: On Internal Transparency and External Practice

The ‘global’ forms an increasingly regular, active and explicit part of the daily business of the EU. The paper argues that there is a specific mismatch between the commitment to transparency on a daily level in international and external fields and practices of EU law and the actual substantive law-making practice evolving. While the EU’s vision of the global is to a degree the most transparent ever, the converse is not necessarily the case as to its legal content. The global dimension to EU law has increasingly expansive subjects and objectives, in areas of existing strength in global actorness (e.g. trade) and in more evolving competences (e.g. security). It argues that while the EU is a significant soft power in trade, it is arguably less so in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) where its global reach becomes more challenging. The relative weakness of the EU’s global approach in the AFSJ is usually or acutely felt by individuals who face challenges in seeking redress increasingly as to aspects of transparency. The paper argues that there is a significant mismatch of internal transparency practices concerning the EU’s global law-making. Ultimately, mismatches between internal procedures and external law-making as to transparency operate adversely upon the global in a variety of ways, e.g. as to transparency and clarity, good administration and territoriality claims taken by individuals. It outlines the express approach to the global in EU policy in (i) migration (ii) passenger name records and the non-express approach to the ‘global’ in EU data protection and data transfers

Three Generations of Participation Rights in European Administrative Proceedings

This paper develops a conceptual framework for analyzing the development of participation rights in Community administration from the early 1970\u27s to the present day. Procedural rights can be divided into three categories, each of which is associated with a distinct phase in Community history and a particular set of institutional actors. The first set of rights, the right to a fair hearing when the Commission inflicts sanctions or other forms of hardship on individuals, first emerged in the 1970\u27s in the context of competition proceedings and later in areas such as anti-dumping and structural funds. This phase was driven by the Court of Justice and an English, and to a lesser extent, German conception of the value of a fair hearing. The rise of transparency in the 1990\u27s-- the requirement of openness in all Community institutions, including administration--marks the second stage. The drive for transparency was led by certain member countries with longstanding traditions of open government--the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden--as well as the European Parliament. The most recent phase in the development of process rights is the debate on whether and under what conditions, individuals, firms, and their associations, billed civil society, should take part in Community legislative and rulemaking proceedings. The Commission and now the Convention on the Future of Europe have been the keenest proponents of giving citizens and their associations a right to participate in rulemaking and legislative proceedings. Civil society participation is then critically examined. Representation--not expertise or good management practices--is the only justification for allocating power, within the Community policymaking process, to individual citizens and their organizations. Yet there is no consensus in Europe, where republican, corporatist, and liberal traditions continue to flourish, on the legitimacy of representation outside of political parties and the electoral process. Without wider consensus, I conclude that associational participation in Community policymaking should not be entrenched and that the Commission should, in mediating the informal influence of civil society actors, act in awareness of its innate institutional bias toward liberal interest group pluralism

Three Generations of Participation Rights in European Administrative Proceedings

This paper develops a conceptual framework for analyzing the development of participation rights in Community administration from the early 1970\u27s to the present day. Procedural rights can be divided into three categories, each of which is associated with a distinct phase in Community history and a particular set of institutional actors. The first set of rights, the right to a fair hearing when the Commission inflicts sanctions or other forms of hardship on individuals, first emerged in the 1970\u27s in the context of competition proceedings and later in areas such as anti-dumping and structural funds. This phase was driven by the Court of Justice and an English, and to a lesser extent, German conception of the value of a fair hearing. The rise of transparency in the 1990\u27s-- the requirement of openness in all Community institutions, including administration--marks the second stage. The drive for transparency was led by certain member countries with longstanding traditions of open government--the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden--as well as the European Parliament. The most recent phase in the development of process rights is the debate on whether and under what conditions, individuals, firms, and their associations, billed civil society, should take part in Community legislative and rulemaking proceedings. The Commission and now the Convention on the Future of Europe have been the keenest proponents of giving citizens and their associations a right to participate in rulemaking and legislative proceedings. Civil society participation is then critically examined. Representation--not expertise or good management practices--is the only justification for allocating power, within the Community policymaking process, to individual citizens and their organizations. Yet there is no consensus in Europe, where republican, corporatist, and liberal traditions continue to flourish, on the legitimacy of representation outside of political parties and the electoral process. Without wider consensus, I conclude that associational participation in Community policymaking should not be entrenched and that the Commission should, in mediating the informal influence of civil society actors, act in awareness of its innate institutional bias toward liberal interest group pluralism

Generating citizen trust in e-government using a trust verification agent: A research note

Generating Citizen Trust in e-Government using a Trust Verification AgentThis is an eGISE network paper. It is motivated by a concern about the extent to which trust issues inhibit a citizen’s take-up of online public sector services or engagement with public decision and policy making. A citizen’s decision to use online systems is influenced by their willingness to trust the environment and agency involved. This project addresses one aspect of individual “trust” decisions by providing support for citizens trying to evaluate the implications of the security infrastructure provided by the agency. Based on studies of the way both groups (citizens and agencies) express their concerns and concepts in the security area, the project will develop a software tool – a trust verification agent (TVA) - that can take an agency’s security statements (or security audit) and infer how effectively this meets the security concerns of a particular citizen. This will enable citizens to state their concerns and obtain an evaluation of the agency’s provision in appropriate “citizen friendly” language. Further, by employing rule-based expert systems techniques the TVA will also be able to explain its evaluation.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UK (grant GR/T27020/01