Public services are typically built on three pillars: access, efficiency, and equity. These are foundational goals, and rightly so. But in practice, many services stop at functionality. They focus on delivery mechanics i.e. how fast a form can be submitted, how many transactions a portal handles, or how well it complies with internal policy. What often gets left out is a more fundamental question: do citizens actually experience these services as valuable?

The disconnect lies in how value is defined. Internally, value tends to be equated with successful delivery: meeting KPIs, reducing costs, or hitting digital adoption targets. But for the citizen, value is shaped by how the service fits into the broader context of their life. A technically functional service can still feel unhelpful. A fast process can still feel impersonal. A clear website can still fail to address what matters most in the moment it is needed.

Citizens today expect more, not because they are harder to please, but because their expectations have evolved. Everyday experiences with private sector platforms, ones that anticipate needs, communicate clearly, and resolve issues without friction, have changed the benchmark. This shift applies even more during critical life moments such as registering a birth, opening a business, applying for support, or resolving a legal matter. These are not just transactions. They are deeply human events.

To meet these expectations, governments need a broader definition of value, one that blends strategic purpose, emotional understanding, and experience design. This article draws from three powerful thinkers who each address a piece of that challenge:

• Peter Drucker, who reminded us that the purpose of any institution is to create value for those it serves
• Noriaki Kano, who differentiated between basic functionality and what truly satisfies
• Joseph Pine, who reframed services as experiences that can be intentionally staged to deliver emotional and memorable value

Together, their ideas offer a way to rethink public services not just as processes to be optimized, but as experiences to be designed with care, meaning, and impact.

Drucker – Re-centering the Purpose of Public Institutions

Peter Drucker’s legacy in management thinking is built on a simple idea: the purpose of any organization is to create a customer. This principle may seem more suited to the private sector, but its relevance in the public sphere is both significant and often overlooked. In government contexts, the equivalent of “the customer” is the citizen. And just like any business, a public institution exists to serve, not just to operate.

When governments define their purpose solely around efficiency, compliance, or policy execution, they risk drifting away from the people they are meant to serve. Drucker argued that organizations must be outward-looking. Their legitimacy comes from their ability to create value in the world, not from their internal structure or administrative success. For public institutions, this means that success is not measured only by how well services are delivered, but by whether those services improve the lives of citizens in ways that matter to them.

This shift in thinking changes the design brief. Instead of asking “How do we process more requests?” the question becomes “How do we enable better outcomes?” Instead of “How can we digitize a service?” the focus moves to “How do we make this process more meaningful, relevant, and effective for those who need it most?”

Re-centering public services around Drucker’s idea of purpose creates three imperatives:

• Focus on outcomes, not just activity. Efficiency is important, but it is not the end goal. Governments should define success by how well a service meets the intended purpose in the citizen’s life.
• Anticipate needs rather than reacting to them. A proactive institution listens early, adapts quickly, and eliminates unnecessary complexity before it becomes a burden.
• Act as a steward of value, not just a provider of services. Public institutions have a unique role in shaping trust, inclusion, and opportunity. That role cannot be fulfilled through administration alone.

For example, a municipality responsible for issuing business licenses might measure performance by the number of licenses issued or the average processing time. While these are important, they do not capture the broader impact of the service. A Drucker-inspired approach would ask whether the licensing process supports local economic growth, enables entrepreneurs, and reduces barriers for underrepresented groups.

This reframing puts citizens at the center and aligns the institution’s mission with real-world outcomes. It creates space for innovation that is not just technological, but strategic. One that is grounded in a clear and enduring sense of public purpose.

Kano – Understanding the Layers of Citizen Expectation

In public service delivery, satisfaction is often assumed to follow a simple formula. If a service is available, functional, and delivered on time, then citizens will be satisfied. However, this linear view does not hold up in practice. Some services meet all technical criteria yet still leave citizens frustrated or disengaged. Others may involve modest complexity but leave a strong positive impression.

To understand this, the Kano model offers valuable insight. Developed by Professor Noriaki Kano, the model shows that not all service attributes contribute equally to satisfaction. Instead, citizen expectations can be grouped into three distinct categories:

• Basic needs: These are fundamental expectations that must be met. If they are absent, citizens are dissatisfied. However, their presence does not increase satisfaction. It is simply expected. For example, being able to access a public service online, or receiving a response in a reasonable time.
• Performance needs: These are the areas where better performance directly improves satisfaction. If the service is faster, clearer, or more helpful, satisfaction rises accordingly.
• Delighters: These are unexpected features or gestures that exceed citizen expectations. They are not demanded, but when they appear, they create a sense of surprise, appreciation, or even trust. Over time, these delighters often become new expectations.

Most public sector services are designed to meet basic and performance needs. The goal is often to reduce pain points, streamline access, and ensure consistency. These are necessary steps. But they do not build strong emotional engagement or lasting positive memory. To move from adequate to valued, services must intentionally identify and design for delighters.

For example, consider the difference between two digital public services. One allows users to submit a form and receive confirmation. The other guides the user through a simplified journey, anticipates common questions, sends timely updates, and ends with a thank-you message that recognizes the citizen’s effort. The second example may not involve major new capabilities, but it introduces thoughtfulness. That small shift transforms the experience.

Kano’s model also warns against overinvesting in performance improvements once expectations have shifted. What was once considered a delighter ,for instance, access to a digital application, eventually becomes a basic need. Innovation must stay ahead of this curve to remain meaningful.

Designing public services through the lens of Kano encourages a more citizen-centered approach. It asks public teams to:

• Understand which expectations are already assumed
• Identify which performance factors drive satisfaction most
• Discover where emotional resonance or positive surprise can be added

These insights help prioritize design and investment decisions. They also support a culture of listening and improvement.  Traits that are essential in a public sector that aims to stay relevant and trusted in a changing world.

Pine – Applying Experience Economy Thinking to Public Services

Joseph Pine’s work on the Experience Economy reshaped how businesses think about value. He argued that goods and services are no longer enough to create differentiation. What matters most in a saturated and choice-driven world is the experience itself. People value how something feels, how it fits into their lives, and how it reflects their identity. This insight, though rooted in commerce, holds significant potential for the public sector.

Governments often frame services as transactions. They are delivered, completed, and recorded. Yet for the citizen, these interactions are rarely neutral. Applying for housing support, registering a birth, navigating healthcare, or closing a business are not routine tasks. They are emotionally charged events that often intersect with life’s most vulnerable or meaningful moments. Pine’s insight challenges public institutions to recognize that every service has an experiential layer, whether designed intentionally or not.

The Experience Economy introduces several important ideas that can be translated into public service design:

• Every service moment is staged, not just delivered. This does not mean adding complexity or theatrics. It means being deliberate about tone, timing, language, and emotional flow.
• Value is co-created with the citizen. Experience is shaped by what the institution provides and how the individual receives it. The best experiences guide people smoothly while respecting their agency.
• Memorability matters. People remember how a service made them feel more than what it required them to do. Frustration, confusion, and indifference are remembered just as clearly as empathy and ease.

Take the example of a digital platform for starting a business. In a typical design, the goal might be to provide all required forms and enable completion within a certain timeframe. But with Pine’s lens, the platform would do more. It would guide the user through the journey step by step, simplify language, offer encouragement, celebrate key milestones, and make it clear what comes next. These small shifts do not require new systems, only a new mindset.

Public services are also well positioned to adopt Pine’s distinction between passive services and active experiences. Many government touchpoints are unavoidable, which makes their emotional impact more powerful. A frustrating public experience is not just an inconvenience. It shapes trust, confidence, and how citizens view the role of the state. A positive one, on the other hand, can demonstrate care, fairness, and effectiveness.

Applying experience thinking does not mean copying private sector tactics. It means recognizing the human context behind each service and shaping the experience accordingly. This involves collaboration across teams, investment in design capabilities, and training frontline staff to view their roles not just as providers, but as stewards of experience.

When public institutions adopt Pine’s view of value, they stop asking only “Did we deliver the service?” and start asking “How did the service feel, and what did it mean for the citizen involved?”

Integration Framework – Designing for Public Value

Taken on their own, Drucker, Kano, and Pine each offer distinct insights. Drucker reframes institutional purpose. Kano breaks down the anatomy of expectations. Pine shifts attention from function to feeling. But their ideas become more powerful when brought together into a shared framework for designing public services that create real value for citizens.

This framework rests on three strategic questions:

• Why are we here? (Drucker)
• What matters most to those we serve? (Kano)
• How does this service feel and what will be remembered? (Pine)

Together, these questions build a more complete model for public service design. Each thinker contributes a layer that is essential and distinct.

1. Drucker’s layer: Purpose and outcomes

Drucker’s perspective provides the strategic anchor. Public services should not define success by volume or completion rates alone. Instead, services should be evaluated by the real-world outcomes they enable. This means grounding every service in a clear purpose that connects to a citizen need or societal goal. Institutions that start here avoid the trap of internal optimization and focus instead on external impact.

Design implication: Clarify the role of each service in the citizen’s life. Is it enabling action, solving a problem, or unlocking opportunity? Align KPIs with these deeper goals.

2. Kano’s layer: Expectations and prioritization

Kano’s model introduces a practical way to understand and prioritize what citizens value. It helps public teams identify which parts of a service must be made reliable, which can differentiate the experience, and where delight or empathy can be added. This model prevents overengineering low-impact features and redirects attention to what truly shapes satisfaction.

Design implication: Map expectations clearly. Separate the essentials from the differentiators. Focus on removing friction at the basic level while identifying one or two features that can elevate the experience meaningfully.

3. Pine’s layer: Emotion and experience

Pine’s approach completes the picture by addressing the emotional and sensory dimensions of a service. It asks whether the citizen journey has been shaped intentionally or left to chance. It focuses on tone, memory, and flow: all critical to how people perceive fairness, trust, and care.

Design implication: Treat every service interaction as a designed experience. Pay attention to entry points, transitions, closure, and the tone of communication. Build space for empathy and clarity, especially during high-stakes moments.

Applying the framework in practice

This integrated model can guide the design and improvement of public services across multiple domains, including policy implementation, digital transformation, frontline operations, and communications. It creates alignment between strategy, citizen insight, and execution.

For example:

• A housing benefit service would start by clarifying its deeper outcome: providing stability during financial hardship (Drucker).
• It would then assess the baseline expectations (timely payments, clear eligibility) and identify one or two delighters, such as proactive communication or reduced paperwork (Kano).
• Finally, it would ensure the tone and journey feel respectful and supportive, particularly during sensitive life events like job loss or illness (Pine).

Measurement would also evolve under this model. Traditional metrics like processing time and completion rates remain important, but they are supplemented by indicators such as perceived clarity, emotional tone, citizen memory, and trust.

From Compliance to Connection – Real-World Implications

Public services are often built with a focus on compliance, consistency, and scale. These are important foundations. But they are not enough to meet the evolving expectations of citizens. People now evaluate services not only by whether they are delivered properly, but by how they feel throughout the process. In this context, value is not simply a matter of completing a transaction. It is a matter of whether the interaction creates confidence, care, and connection.

This shift has real implications for how public institutions operate. It changes how teams think about quality, how services are designed and tested, and how performance is measured.

1. Redefining performance beyond delivery

Traditionally, performance has been tied to compliance metrics such as volume processed, response time, and error rates. These remain useful but do not capture the full picture. A service can meet all operational benchmarks and still feel unhelpful or frustrating. Expanding performance measurement to include clarity, tone, emotional impact, and resolution quality allows for a more complete view of success.

Practical implication: Introduce qualitative metrics into service evaluations. Use citizen feedback not just as a satisfaction score, but as a source of insight into how services are experienced. Track repeat contacts, abandonment rates, and emotional sentiment to spot friction points.

2. Shifting from user-centered to citizen-lived design

Many public services today follow a user-centered approach. They test interfaces, simplify instructions, and remove obvious blockers. This is a valuable step, but it can miss the larger context in which the service exists. Citizens interact with services at specific moments in their lives often when they are under stress, navigating change, or facing uncertainty. Designing for lived experience requires a broader lens that takes into account emotion, timing, social factors, and long-term outcomes.

Practical implication: Map citizen journeys not only in terms of steps, but in terms of life context. Understand the emotions, questions, and dependencies that arise before, during, and after the service interaction. Use this understanding to inform content, guidance, and tone.

3. Rebalancing standardization and personalization

Governments often lean toward standardization to ensure fairness and efficiency. But too much uniformity can reduce the sense of care and relevance. Citizens do not expect full customization. They do expect responsiveness to their situation. A well-designed service respects this by providing consistent core processes while allowing for variation in support, communication, and tone.

Practical implication: Use data responsibly to adapt experiences based on known information. Allow for optional guidance, modular steps, or alternative channels without creating unnecessary complexity. Personalize at the level of communication and navigation, even if the policy remains the same.

4. Equipping teams to deliver human value

No framework can create value without capable people behind it. Frontline employees and digital designers need the tools, space, and support to act with empathy and purpose. This includes not just technical skills, but the ability to interpret need, communicate clearly, and adjust their approach in real time.

Practical implication: Train teams in emotional intelligence, active listening, and adaptive communication. Redesign performance frameworks to recognize contributions that improve the citizen experience, even if they fall outside strict task completion.

Designing Public Services That People Actually Value

Public services shape how people experience the state. They are not neutral transactions. They reflect intention, competence, and care. When they are designed only to meet policy or compliance requirements, they risk becoming distant, impersonal, and ineffective. But when they are designed to create value in the lives of citizens, they become powerful tools for trust, dignity, and shared progress.

Bringing together the ideas of Peter Drucker, Noriaki Kano, and Joseph Pine offers a deeper way to understand and shape this value. Drucker reminds public institutions to begin with purpose, to understand why they exist and whom they serve. Kano introduces a clear structure for recognizing which elements of a service truly matter to the citizen. Pine elevates the experience itself, showing that how a service feels is often as important as what it does.

This combined lens helps public institutions move from transaction to transformation. It supports a shift in posture, from internal optimization to external value. From delivery to design. From compliance to connection.

The implications are practical. They call for new forms of measurement that include emotion and memory, not just completion and volume. They require deeper listening to the lived experiences of citizens. They ask public teams to bring creativity and empathy into processes that have too often been defined by rules alone.

Designing services that people actually value does not mean adding complexity. It means removing the distance between systems and the people they are meant to serve. It means treating every touchpoint, whether digital or in person, as a chance to affirm care, purpose, and inclusion.

This is a responsibility. And it is within reach. With clarity of purpose, insight into expectations, and a commitment to experience, public institutions can build services that are not only efficient, but meaningful. Not only delivered but remembered.

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