Welcome

Welcome to the latest edition of Ipsos MORI’s Understanding Government e-bulletin. It was good to see so many of you at our End of Year event, with Adam Boulton of Sky and Polly Toynbee of the Guardian. Here are my slides from the event covering British society and politics in 2008 and our End of Year Review. Do get in touch if you want to discuss anything in these.

In this issue we look at continued efforts to make services more citizen-centric. First we compare our experience of public and private sector approaches to understanding customers, and discuss what each sector can learn from the other. We also look at what we can learn about customer relationships in the public sector using the metaphor of personal relationships, considering the emotional elements of a relationship as well as the rational/transactional.

A high-profile issue for service providers and customers alike is data sharing, privacy and use of personal data, and we discuss new evidence from Ipsos MORI’s Real Trends survey on how the public view these issues.

Finally, none of us can afford to ignore the wider context of the current economic climate, and we outline our latest Delivery Index findings on the public’s expectations of the economy and public services.

We hope you find these articles interesting. Feel free to pass on this e-bulletin to friends and colleagues, and do contact us by phone or by email if you have any comments or would like more details on anything we’ve covered.

Have a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Ben Page, Chairman of the Social Research Institute

Articles

Insight into the customer experience: What can the public and private sector learn from each other?
There has recently been renewed emphasis on making public services more customer-orientated. We therefore brought together Gideon Skinner, a Research Director in Ipsos MORI Public Affairs and expert in Central Government research, and Simon Atkinson, Managing Director of Ipsos MORI Loyalty, to compare and contrast public and private sector approaches to understanding their customers, and discuss what each can learn from the other.
By Gideon Skinner and Simon Atkinson. Read More...

Understanding Customer Relationships
What can our personal relationships teach
us about the relationships users have with
public services?
By Alex Bollen and Claire Emes. Read More...

Data security and privacy: what do the public think?
New technology has made it possible to share data almost immediately. This unprecedented interconnectedness has profoundly altered the way we interact with each other and with service providers. But what do the public make of it all? And what does this mean for service providers?
By Heike Friemert and Emily Gray. Read More...

Ipsos MORI Delivery Index
The public were sceptical about Government
policies in tough economic times, though there are more recent signs that they are beginning to rally round the Government.
By Angela Klein and Graham Keilloh. Read More...