ABSTRACT
The paradigm of new public management (NPM), reinventing government, and the more recent trend of transformational government initiated through electronic government (eGov) exhaustively explore the economic impact of the public service system. They also show that public administration has been democratized and good governance implemented. As Bilhim and Neves (2005: 3) have stated: “We are now aware that the satisfaction of citizens’ needs is essential when we refer to Public Services. This is a significant subject for Managerial School supporters, who have been debating the ways that governments should produce and deliver public services”. The traditional public service system is bureaucratic, subjective, less goal oriented, costly, slow, and corrupted, and it cannot meet the demand by citizens in the twenty-first century, as articulated. The desire long held by citizens for competent service from public administration has been addressed, manipulated, and synthesized in NPM (Light 2006: 12). Under this perspective, a public service system, which is rooted in offering citizens collective preference and substantial welfare services, cannot be denied. Minogue, Polidano, and Hulme (1998: 32) properly depicted the dilemma by observing the need for “Democratic and participative values which give greater weight to accountability than efficiency, while recognizing that citizens want government to be efficient too”.
