Title: DEVICE FOR BETTER TARGETING PUBLIC SERVICES: INVOLVEMENT OF CITIZENS INTO STRATEGIC PLANNING IN THE LOCAL LEVEL
Author: Riigiteadused
Company: TPÜ

Devices for better targeting public services: citizens involvement in strategic planning in the City of Tallinn: implications for public service quality

By Viola Rea-Soiver
(MA student in Public Administration of Tallinn University of Educational Sciences)

Abstract
The article in hand introduces the development plan of the City of Tallinn. Besides the description of the plan composition phases, the author brings up the strengths and weaknesses of the planning process. Also there is a comparison with PUMA Policy Brief about involving citizens into policy-making process. The article raises concern of involving citizens into planning process to provide better quality services for citizens.
Introduction
The article introduces the development plan of the City of Tallinn. The first author gives some background information about the system of local governments in Estonia and stresses generally to service delivery in local governments.
Estonia has developed the rather autonomous model of one tier local government with 247 local government units – 42 towns and 205 rural municipalities. All municipalities are governed by universal regulations, although their size and capacity are rather different. In case of incapacity, the local government cannot delegate its functions to the upper tier (county) of government. (Sootla et al, 2001)
Institutional structure of Estonian local government is quite typical shape for the local self-government with elected council that appoints local government. The Municipality council is elected every three years. It has sovereign authority to adopt the municipality statute, development plan and budget, to establish local taxes and tax exemptions, rules of management of municipality property and to appoint members of government and define their salaries. The government is autonomous to adopt decrees and orders in areas that are not listed as the sovereign competence of the council. The head of the local executive is appointed by the local council and would be dismissed after the vote of non-confidence. (Ibid)
Foundations and NGO-s are established the public law restrains effective management or service delivery. Most frequently these are organizations managing culture and heritage, specific real estate, tourism and housing. (Ibid)
The distribution of responsibilities between central government and local governments are represented in table 1.

| State government | Local government
Defense | Entire responsibility |
Justice/Internal safety | Entire responsibility |
Foreign/Economic   relations | Entire responsibility |
Education and culture | All universities and research institutions; teachers’ training; preparation of textbooks and methodological materials; some investment grants | Construction, operation and maintenance of primary and secondary schools, kindergartens etc. Salaries and social security of teachers in primary and secondary schools. Sports facilities, houses of culture and community centers, vocational, hobby and sport schools
Health | Research medical institutes, special services hospitals and tertiary hospitals (there is a national health fund which covers individual medical expenses) | Capital investment and maintenance of municipal hospitals and polyclinics
Roads | Construction of national highways, maintenance of state highways and other roads linking cities and villages | Maintenance of local networks and town streets
Public Transportation | Intercity buses by state enterprise, airports, railway subsidy and subsidy for local transportation | Local public transport
Fire protection | All fire protection services and emergency services |
Libraries and other | National library and museums | Local libraries, cultural centers and museums
Police service | National police |
Sanitation | | Garbage collection and street cleaning
Water and sewerage | Some investment grants | Operation and capital expenditures
Public utilities | Electricity and gas provided by state enterprises | District heating
Housing | | Housing maintenance and communal services
Social welfare | Unemployment benefits, subsidies to local governments for other welfare including housing and living allowances | Care for elderly, home visits and other social services
Environment | Responsible for national environment issues | Local environment issues
Table 1. Distribution of responsibilities between central government and local governments (Sootla et al., 2001)
As mentioned above local authorities can’t give their obligations to upper tier and should provide all these services by themselves. The quality of services varied strongly. We can talk about pull-centers were the service delivering process are more intensive. Tallinn as capital of Estonia is one pull-center were citizens from other local authorities come for services, i.e. better quality of teachers and wide range of specializes in high schools, wide range of possibilities for recreation. In health system citizens ought to choose a general practitioner and have to consume the service of certain doctor. This has changed the quality of services in wider range. 
By the Act of Local Authorities in Estonia every local authority has to complete their ideas of strategic direction in development plan. Development plan is short-range strategy for some years and it task is concrete the statement of vision and through goals makes possible to achieve vision. Development plan consists of all areas that local authorities are responsible for. The general expectation of the use of planning in local authorities is the deliverance of better quality services to citizens.
Service delivery in the City of Tallinn
The article concentrates the planning processes for 2001-2005. Tallinn as local authority is existed more that ten years and this planning process wasn’t first one for city. The use of new methodology and deeper preparation for planning has made the process more complicated. There were complete analysis of current situation in the area of service delivery.
First of all author introduces the results of analysis of service delivering. Tallinn has obligations for deliver almost 200 different public services. The overview of the quality and necessity of them and information about dubbing services in local and state level was unknown subject before the planning process.
Area | Public services | Budget (mln kroons)
Education | Preschools, secondary schools, schools for children of special needs, adult education, education of interests and hobbies | 860
Communications | Municipality roads, water and sewer system | 330
Transportations | Arrangement of traffic, mass transportation, arrangement of parking, arrangement of traffic of pedestrian and circlers | 310
Safeness, well-being | Green areas, parks, arrangement of garbage, cemeteries, arrangements of having a pet, projects of safeness | 230
Recreation | Buildings for recreation, events of culture, sports and recreation | 220
Social work | Senior citizens, orphans, citizens with handicap, families in risk level, adoption, contribution for lodging, care for juveniles, pariahs | 140
Hygiene | General practitioner, special doctors and hygiene of schools | 40
Tourism and Old Town | Objects of appreciation for tourism and heritage, information | 20
Planning of the city | Planning, activity of building, geodesy, cartographic, accomplish of real estate, lodging | 10
Entrepreneurship | Trade conditions for retail trade, consulting, marketing, rent and sale of property of the city | 10
Records | Services of recording, intercession of services of state | 10
Accomplish of public policy | Legislation and licenses | 280
Table 2. Public services delivered by the City of Tallinn. (www.tallinn.ee)
The services that the City of Tallinn is providing (see table 2) can be divided into two parts based on finance volume of delivering services. Areas as education, communication, transportation, well-being and safeness, recreation and social work are requiring more resources. The consuming of these services are high and the target group of consumers are segmented; this makes the deliverance of services more complicated and therefore more expensive.
Description of the planning process in the City of Tallinn
The development plan is one way to improve services via strategic planning. The following is a description of process of strategic planning in the City of Tallinn. The main interest is focusing to better quality in service delivery.
Besides the development plan, which for the moment is supposed to last from 2001 until 2005, there is also a requirement (Local Government Act of the Republic of Estonia) to compose the, so called, General Plan. The General Plan provides territorial-economic planning for local authorities, development plan socio-economical development. These two documents constitute the base of local planning. However, besides these two there is a number of other sectored or more specific planning in the City of Tallinn like the Marketing Strategy, IT Development Strategy, Development Plan for Social Care, Green Areas Planning, Mass Transport Planning and so on. The development plan is a focal point of all these specified plans and strategies and supposed to enable harmonized development of the City. 
There are three stages in putting the development plan together. The first phase fixes strategic directions concerning the City of Tallinn; in second phase setting of operational plans for major goals is taking place; and, finally, goals are being related to the budgeting and organizational resources. In the next paragraph the author takes a closer look at how development plan decision-making stages are related to citizens’ involvement and service delivery. 
Fixing of the strategic direction
First of all, the mayor of the City Jüri Mõis along with specialists has proceeded the general environmental scanning, which allows to investigate the present situation. They use SWOT analysis – it is the most common method of analysis for the planning process in Estonia. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the City environment are brought up during this analysis. 
In doing SWOT very little place is given to polls – the preferred source of data are the databases of local authorities. They also used essays of high school students on subjects like students’ opinion of the development in the City and their “Dream City”. 
Beside the SWOT analysis city administration defined the risks. Tendencies and factors from external environment and inner organization what could influence the accomplishment of goals. These risks have accounted on defined the goals and the ways to accomplish them.
There were ten risks what had to be account in planning process. There were other risks also but their impact to planning wasn’t crucial. City administration divided risks to categories like main risks and other risks. The planning work group assessed risks by probability of appearance and level of impact to planning process and goal achievement.
The main risks were:
•	The risk of tempo of development: the election of city council is every three years and this is short time for planning and achieving the goals. The tempo of development and intensity of achieving goals could be higher that normal because the members of council want quick results to ensure their electors to vote for them again.
•	The risk of loosing high-paid citizens: there is a tendency that high-paid citizens want to move closer to nature and out of the City. The main income from citizens to local budget is residential tax and moving to suburb the tax goes to budget of other local authority. Moving away from Tallinn doesn’t mean to abdicate the public services of Tallinn. These citizens relationship with the city with their job are still existing and they still using public services. The payments from other local authorities are paid only when the user of public service can be identified, i.e. education, hygiene, some services in social work.
•	The risk of strategy: there is a risk that city administration acts without certain direction, without focusing all the activities and without measuring the results. The existing development plan is helps to avoid this risk when the city administration follows the plan.
These risks are the most important because their probability of appearance and impact to goals’ achievement would be high.
•	The macroeconomics risk: the city of Tallinn is the important part of economical life of Estonia and the deterioration of economical conditions has a crucial impact on the budget of local authority and therefore on the achievement of goals.
•	The risk of appreciation: Tallinn will loose some of the attractively of tourism.
•	The risk of arbitrary of the civil servants: the civil servants would block the goals’ achievement or they haven’t the ability to achieve goals.
These risks aren’t so important because their probability of appearance and impact on goals’ achievement would be mediocre. The probability of appearance is high with risks like lack of motivation and high impact on political interest but their impact on goals’ achievement would be low. And because of that the city administration doesn’t account with these risks when sets the goals. The impact on goal achievement is high with risks like impact of regulations in state level and instability of Russia but their probability of appearance would be low.
Based on the information received during the hole process the mayor and his team were wording their vision and values of management and set respective goals (actually, two set of goals are set: those ones that have to achieved, guarantying minimal level development, and those ones that are better to be reached, which is a precondition for the maximum level of development). 
Due to the closed nature of the planning process, the legitimacy was to be achieved through the presentation of generalized results of work to the public. For this purpose a public seminar was held, what was considered as the best form of information dissemination and citizens’ involvement. Tallinn is the capitol of the Republic and the importance of media, which was one of the most present at the public seminar, is more than remarkable. Thus, the strategy presented had undergone certain changes lobbied through the media.
Compose operational plans
The workload was divided into sectors and distributed to 13 specially created workgroups, which had to create development strategies for the respective fields. This phase had crucial meaning for both local administration in the development process and for citizens’ involvement. 
There were list of tasks to fulfill in each working groups:
•	Identified the main trends in society, in economy, in technology etc. what had impact on development of the area;
•	The activity model of the area;
•	The key figures what described the development level and efficiency of the area;
•	The SWOT analysis;
•	The brainstorm for set the goals;
•	The selection of critical goals (had to be achieved for minimal level of planning);
•	The selection of break-throw goals (had to be achieved for maximum level of planning);
•	The selection of indicators what described the achievement of goal;
•	The brainstorm for set the sub-goals and the selection of indicators what described the achievement of sub-goals;
•	The composition of plan of activities for achieving the selected goals (the list of activities and their description, the set of timetable and supervisor for activities and the list of necessary resources i.e. money, human resources, work place etc);
•	The brainstorm for set the goals for first year and the selection of indicators what described the achievement of these goals (the plans for activities).
The work groups haven’t directly divided between different goals; based on the competencies of the members of work groups they made recommendations to background analysis and goals’ achievement. 
In this article the author concerns main interest to goals’ what had stronger connection with service delivery. The most important goal about service delivery was changing the quality of service delivery and efficiency to higher level. The achievement of every goal measures with indicators; there are two indicators to measure the achievement of that goal:
•	The contentment of interest groups: today the level is 100 percent and with five years they want to increase it with 50 percent. The methodology of measuring the indicator is not includes in development plan.
•	The size of administration (the civil servants who don’t directly serve citizens): today the size is 1,600 persons and with five years they want to decrease it with 600 persons (total amount will be 1000 civil servants). In remark there is 27,784 employees in the institutions of the city.
The supervisor of the achievement of that goal is working group of organizational development; the head of the working group was the mayor Jüri Mõis. All other members of the working group were from administration of local authority or from the ministry of inner affairs (it controls the activity of local authorities). There was Toomas Luman from the association of trade and industry (the organization united entrepreneurs from different size).
The list of the services that the City of Tallinn is providing was above. The trends of service delivery in the city can describe throw following principles:
•	There are more services from other sectors: local authority tries to avoid delivering services that also provided by privet sector. This tendency has positive impact on development of environment of entrepreneurship.
•	The decrease of the size of administration: the differences in organizational structure between public and private sector organizations have decrease to minimum level. The greater likeness is orientation to results not process.
•	There are more services what provided partly or fully electronically: this increase the speed and comfortable for service delivery for citizens.
•	The increasing level of quality: the supplying-demanding relationship is replacing with tender-client relationship.
•	The increase of orientation to results: the city administration has to provide more information about goals, plans of activity and results.
There was also SWOT analysis as a compulsory part of every development plan in Estonia. The strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats of improving quality of public services in the City of Tallinn was following:
Strengths:
•	The orientation to results
•	The strong strategic vision
•	The well-developed communications
•	The high level of education in the administration of local authority
Weaknesses:
•	The inadequate description of public products and services 
•	The absent of the standards of public products and services
•	Too much bureaucracy and low quality of services in the institutions of the City
•	The lack of complete registers and databases
•	The absent of general and unified service providing organization
Opportunities
•	The involvement of private sector in service proving process
•	The opportunities for innovation and change
•	The fast development of the area of communications
Threats
•	The abate of taxpayers
•	The effluent of qualified employees
•	The absent of general register of citizens in Estonia.
According to trends and tendencies of the development of the area the working groups defined sub-goals and activity plans to accomplish the sub-goals.
All the sub-goals were unified and tried to create the mechanisms for improving the quality of public services. Every sub-goal had indicators to evaluate the accomplishment of the sub-goal.
•	The clear list and descriptions of public services of the city (today there isn't any list and there could be dubbing and undelivered services).
•	The distribution net for public services (today the responsibility for service delivery is blur and unclear; the task is to create the institution who is responsible for service delivery).
•	The standards for public services (today there aren't unified and detailed standards for service delivery)
•	The regular annual poll for satisfaction of citizens (today the poll is inadequate).
•	The training for civil servants (increase the payment for training; today the total payment for the training of one civil servant is 1060 kroons (about 70 euros) in the year. The task is to increase it to 4340 kroons (290 euros); it is the average salary of civil servant in month.)
•	Increase the capacity of administration by increasing the speed of decision-making process in two times and clearly defined goals are understandable for every civil servant in the administration. The third indicator is the level of goal's accomplishment and they want to increase it by 60 percent.
•	The cooperation with private and non-profit sectors (today private and non-profit sector deliver five percent of the total amount of services in the City. In the year of 2005 the percent should be twenty.)
•	Improving the quality of supporting systems of info-technology (today the congruity of different registers and databases is 30 percent. In the year of 2005 the percent should be seventy.)
•	Increase the productivity of civil servant (today when we dived the budget of the City with the amount of the civil servants of the city the answer is 88,000 kroons (5,600 euros). In the year of 2005 it going to be 250,000 kroons (16,000 euros).
The citizens were represented in other working groups what discuss certain issues like culture, lodging, social work, education etc. In the first phase of composing development plan the mayor and his assistants defined interest groups that could be interested in the development process of the City. One of these groups about citizens would be interested in are services like lodging, education, communication, safeness, hygiene and spending free time (recreation); also, jobs and support and all kinds of assistance issues. There weren't any citizens' representatives in the working group of development of the organizational development who was responsible for accomplishing the goal of improving the quality of public services. The citizens with certain interest were involved in certain working group, i.e. parents with children had involved to the working group of education or social issues.
The final stage of Development Plan adoption
After reaching some content of principles in the development plan the City Secretary and his team of specialists must find all necessary or available resources (human, financial, territorial and so on) for the implementation of the development plan. In addition, the task is also to set the terms of goal achievement and the system of control: accounting system, scheduled meetings, revelation policy, payment system etc. 
As a result of this stage there is development plan of the City, which before being voted by the City Council is supposed to be presented to the public via Internet access (publication of the development plan draft is compulsory to all local authorities according to the Local Government Act). 
The set of goals: conclusions
There were nine different goals and thirteen different work groups. Work groups had to cooperate among themselves to specify the goals more precisely: how to measure the achievement of goals, what were the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the development in specific areas, a step-by-step operational plan with sub-goals of achievement of certain goals.
The analysis of citizens participation according to PUMA Policy Brief
We can take the process of composing development plan as a process of policy-making in local authority. According to PUMA Policy Brief No 10 about citizens' participation into policy-making process the author analysis the ways of citizens' participation.
1.	Information is a basic precondition: There is a require of public debate about the development plan before the city council legislate it by the Act of Local Authorities in Estonia. There were opened other information channel like public seminar after the first phase and the department of public relation constantly gave information about planning process via web site during the planning process. 
2.	Consultation is central to policy-making: In the process of composing the development plan had involved the representatives of associations of trade and industry and also representatives of associations of citizens', i.e. the union of persons with handicap, the association of doctors in Tallinn etc.
3.	Active participation is a new frontier: One way is participation on activity of work groups. There is a way that citizens can initiate the draft of regulation. It requires prior collection of signatures from a least one percent of voters from the certain local authority.
4.	Matching tools to objectives: there has opened many information channels to provide information about planning process and them have mention above. The administration of the city has tried to accomplish the goals that stated in development plan. There has opened additional ways to have two-ways communication with citizens as a result of development plan. The first would be morning coffee with mayor and his assistants once in a month. The second would be regular polls of citizens' satisfactory that provide feedback to the administration of the local authority.
5.	Unlocking the potential of ICT (information and communication technologies): the composition of the web site of the city (made by the administration of the city) is to make service delivery less complicated and faster. There is information about the institutions of the city, also some forms in the web site. In Estonia are great discussions about e-service delivery and digital signature but all these are great ideas without great impact on practice. In the web site has opened several forums with different subjects or issues and everyone has an opportunity to tell about his thoughts and suggestions. The only problem is the lack of matter-of-fact ideas; many ideas are anonymous and vulgar. This is general problem for almost every institution of state or local authority in Estonia.
6.	Evaluating performance: it is a big step ahead that every goal and sub-goal got evaluating indicators. Some of the indicators are a little bit to unrealistic but usually there aren't any indicators to evaluate the results of goals' achievement in the local authorities in Estonia.
Strengths and weaknesses of the planning process in The City of Tallinn
All strengths and weaknesses are compared to planning processes made by other local authorities or to the theoretical planning process. The lists of strengths or weaknesses are not composed according to the importance or influence had on the process; it is done in order of appearance in stages of the process.
The strengths of planning process
The bigger the size of the local authorities, the more there are resources to produce process planning of a higher quality. For instance, in smaller localities there was one specialist in social issues, who dealt at a time with social work, hygiene, education, culture, sports and activities of youth. It is clear that some areas are left out of attention in this manner. On the other hand, big local authorities not only had more sophisticated expertise and more resources, but also a larger set of opinions to be presented.
Using SWOT analysis helped to clear out all the risks related to the development plan and made it more implementable: goals are set departing from what really happens, not as an ideal to reach. Thus, also granting lager support and stronger positive attitude in local governments towards the planning process. 
However, comparison of Tallinn to other Estonian cities is impossible due to the fact that the capital is few times bigger. The decision was made to analyze the experience of big cities around the Baltic Sea in other countries. Thus, Tallinn has a long way yet to go and vast space for self-improvement. 
The planning process was accurately developed because Tallinn has better human and financial resources. Smaller local authorities can’t afford highly specialized civil servants or experts and they often use standardized form what consulting firms presents.
The weaknesses of planning process
There wasn't any representative of nonprofit sector in the working groups for set sub-goals and criteria for the goal of better quality in service delivery. One sub-goal was increase the amount of services what deliver institutions and associations of private and nonprofit sector. The representative of association of trade and industry represented the private sector. The nonprofit sector is quite young in Estonia and the City of Tallinn could have a change to introduce their ideas for the shaping the sector. 
Involving academic professionals is also a solution due to their heavy expertise in LG development and LG strategies. For the moment, academics are called for help only in specific fields like education. However, their participation as experts of process planning and strategies in general is possible and of crucial importance. Involving universities as analytical bodies is very effective as they could apply more or less professional human resource for conducting the analysis like students. 
Some big business corporations (not associations) were involved into planning process in several work groups and it can be said that they dominate the process. The author can’t evaluate or judge how much they influence the process. However, it would be better to restrict the influence of single business corporations. 
Conclusion
The development plan should be important document for local authority and this should unite the views of civil servants, politicians and citizens. Tallinn as a biggest city in Estonia should has the best opportunities to provide planning process in high quality. It was pleasant surprise that internationally composed PUMA Policy Brief suggest different ways to participate citizens into policy-making and the City of Tallinn had used all the ways with different tools.
References
Development Plan of the City of Tallinn (http://www.tallinn.ee)
G. Sootla et.al. Budgeting in Local Government: Estonia. OSI Grant, 2001
OECD PUMA Policy Brief No. 10: Engaging Citizens in Policy-making: Information, Consultation and Pblic Participation. July 2001