Throughout a period of three months, citizens of Moldova will have the opportunity to contribute with feedback and recommendations regarding the quality of public services provided by the National Chamber of Social Insurance (NCSI) by using feedback and evaluation devices placed in several NCSI offices.

Starting with 15th of March, in eight territorial NCSI offices from Chisinau (Botanica, Buiucani and Rascani), Ialoveni, Floresti, Balti, Cahul and Comrat, people will provide feedback and suggestions with respect to the accessibility of the information received, the staff amiability and the conditions of service. People will put marks for the received services through the devices installed for the piloting period of three months within eight territorial offices.

 "The recommendations and suggestions collected from beneficiaries will be thoroughly analysed and integrated into the operating procedures of the NCSI offices, and this will allow us to objectively evaluate our staff’s performance, improve the infrastructure or simplify the documentation process.” stated Natalia Şmundeac, Chief of Strategic Planning and Analysis Direction within NCSI.

Furthermore, the mechanism will have an unconventional feature to it. And namely, the collected data, feedback from citizens, and the actions undertaken by the NCSI will be displayed on LED screens within the eight NCSI offices undergoing the prototyping.

"Following the successful prototyping of the instrument, the next phase will comprise in its integration into all the public institutions which deliver services to citizens. Hence, public servants will be able to use the suggestions and recommendations provided by citizens to adjust the way public services are delivered, in order to meet the expectations and needs of citizens”, asserted Dmitri Belan, Research Officer and Service Designer at MiLab.

In order to develop an efficient tool for both users and service providers, MiLab experts conducted a series of focus group discussions and in-depth interviews within seven branches of National Chamber of Social Insurance situated in Chisinau, Ialoveni, Cahul, Balti and Comrat. The research team used different methodologies to achieve deep and nuanced understandings on various aspects of user experience, and focused on respondents’ attitudes, behaviours, and challenges with regards to providing feedback for the public services.

Subsequently, with the collected inputs, an Ideation workshop was organized where participants assessed the main problems identified, and came up with ideas to develop the public service evaluation tool. At the same time, the workshop had the role to identify the proper channels of communications given the low digital literacy amongst the NCSI’s core constituency – pensioners.

Additionally, in November 2017 various IT specialists met at a national Boot Camp to develop an innovative and useful citizen feedback application which will allow the collection of feedback and recommendations from users concerning the quality of public services.

The re-engineering of public services is an inherent part of the Government of the Republic of Moldova’s Public Administration Reform Strategy for 2016-2020. A critical input to this process is a robust monitoring and evaluation of the public services provided to citizens. Hence, the development of the Public Service Evaluation Tool comes to assess whether the needs and expectations of the citizens are met.

The activity is being conducted by the Moldova Social Innovation Lab, MiLab – a joint project of UNDP Moldova and State Chancellery - in partnership with the NCSI and the Government of Republic of Moldova. This initiative is supported by the Slovak Government.