ABSTRACT
The public interacts with public administration in several roles: as citizen, client, customer, contractor, regulatee, participant, and litigant as well as in street-level encounters. The public's evaluation of public administration is complex; it is sometimes accurate, and often not so accurate. It is in some ways very telling that the NPR looked toward making agencies responsive to customers, rather than elections, as the primary means of overcoming the public's lack of control over public administration. The public's evaluation of public administration is complex and, in some respects, puzzling. Presumably each explains something about the disparity, and consequently, each provides a basis for trying to improve the public's understanding of and interaction with public administration and improve public administrators' thinking and dealing with the public. The public's evaluation of local government services has been studied extensively. Theodore Poister and Gary Henry used the PTM scale to report the public's evaluation of the quality of public and private services in Georgia.
