Comments on: my_$publicservice.org

By: Bookmarks for March 21st through March 29th

Bookmarks for March 21st through March 29th — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:02:23 +0000

[...] my_$publicservice.org – "What really matters in the end is that we listen, and having listened respond and improve." [...]

By: James Munro

James Munro — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 16:10:45 +0000

Thanks for (yet another!) really helpful post on a set of issues we spend a lot of time thinking about. (Full disclosure: I am one of the Patient Opinion team.) There’s a lot to discuss here, but I’ll restrict myself to just two thoughts.
1: We would make a strong distinction between feedback and complaint. It is a distinction that seems to be hard for the NHS, and perhaps other public services, to appreciate. The nature of the distinction is worthy of a proper discussion, but my feeling is that the desired end of feedback is improvement, whereas the desired end of complaint is reparation or redress. Often, we find that a patient may want simply to offer negative feedback, but the NHS wants to channel the patient into a “complaints process”.
Both feedback and complaint are important. The lack of either will lead to loss of trust, while presence of both may enable the restoration of trust. To date, Patient Opinion has been focused on feedback, not complaint – but that may change. We do have some early ideas around supporting the possibility of “restorative redress” for health care on the web, but they are early.
2: I’m struck by the argument about the emotional engagement in the NHS, and that this may transfer to some, but not many, other public services. This may be true, but I think we need to push the analysis further to find out why. The NHS often seems to be a service people love in theory but find frustrating in reality. It embodies values many would support. People feed back (we think) because they want the reality to live up to the values.
So why couldn’t this be true of the Pensions Agency, for example? There are values here many could support. There is probably much activity many would admire. Is it just less tangible, less known, less dramatic? Could public feedback on the web actually be part of reconnecting such public services with the values they aim to embody?

By: Public Strategist

Public Strategist — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 22:50:34 +0000

Fair point: this post started out being about something slightly different, and in the rewriting has ended up with more of the language of complaints than it should have done. I agree that Patient Opinion is interesting because it is about stories rather than about complaints – and I did make the point that most of what appears there is positive rather than negative.

But in the end, I think the last sentence of your comment and the last sentence of the post are saying the same thing: there needs to be a space where experiences are shared, and those experiences need to be listened by people who have the responsibility to act on them.

By: Gordon Rae

Gordon Rae — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 20:14:51 +0000

I’m not sure where you’re going with this one. Is it about complaining? Is it about giving feedback? Or is it about sharing experiences?

From my point of view, I like Patient Opinion because it’s full of first person stories sharing experiences. Some are complaints, and a lot are about good things. And they’re not addressed to anybody in particular, they’re shared with whoever’s interested.

One of the things I like about sites like this is that they have the potential to be useful qualitative datasets for designers. They also have the potential to capture ideas and foster discussion; you could think of this as participative design, you could laso use it to help you prioritise projects. But there doesn’t have to be a project. People talked about hospital gowns were for years before there was a project to design a better one.

I’d be very concerned if a site was marketed or perceived as “where you go to make a complaint.” People do need to feel they have permission to complain, but for me at any rate, it’s much more important to have a place where you can talk about public services, and you have confidence that the talk is going to get listened to.