Demand smoothing response by street‐level bureaucrats (SLB) in delivering public services during COVID‐19 scenario: A system dynamics modeling study

Prusty, Santosh Kumar; Mahapatra, Diptiranjan

During such unprecedented time as COVID‐19, despite stretched to its limit, public service delivery remains crucial to societies' well‐being. Street‐level bureaucrats (SLBs), specifically, become the most visible outreach of public policies to citizen. However, as the literature suggests, unintended outcomes of SLBs–citizen interfacing have been discretion, inefficiency and accountability, an issue lies at the heart of the standard public governance. No scholarly attempt has been made in the past to address this shortcoming. This research by proposing a conceptual model using system dynamics captures the complexity, and in so doing posits testable hypotheses that instigate an alternative visualization of public affairs, thereby closing the gap in the SLB scholarship.