Territorial diversity of availability of public services in Poland
Authors:   Faculty of Management and Computer Modeling, Kielce University of Technology, MIŁEK Dorota 
Published: November 2020

Purpose: The nature of contemporary development processes determines the development of the area of public services, which is related to the distribution of these services and is of interest to public sector economics. The state’s key commitment to its citizens is to guarantee adequate availability of public services. It is an important issue that determines the quality of life of the citizens and determines the level of social and economic development of territorial units. The aim of this paper is to analyze and evaluate inequalities in access to selected public services in Poland from a regional perspective. Design/methodology/approach: To assess the level of availability of selected public services in Poland, Hellwig’s synthetic indicator was used, which made it possible to indicate the ranking of voivodeships in terms of availability of public services. The research is complemented by the Ward’s clustering method, which was used to identify clusters of territorial units with a similar level of availability of the analyzed services. The research used data made available by the Statistics Poland (GUS), including the Local Data Bank and statistical studies: Use of information and communication technologies in 2014 (orig. title: Wykorzystanie technologii informacyjno-telekomunikacyjnych w 2014 roku) and Use of information and communication technologies in 2018 (orig. title: Wykorzystanie technologii informacyjno-telekomunikacyjnych w 2018 roku). The analysis concerns the years 2014 and 2018. Findings: Regions of Poland are characterized by a diverse level of availability of public services. The analysis allowed to identify the regions with the highest, high, low and very low level of availability of public services. The distance between the highest and the lowest ranked voivodeships indicates quite significant territorial inequalities in access to public services, although it has slightly decreased throughout the analyzed years. Social implications: The study of availability of public services is an important component of the assessment of the level of social and economic development of territorial units and the standard of living of local communities. Therefore, it is justified to determine the essence of spatial diversity of the level of availability of public services, which play an important role in shaping the level of social and economic development of territorial units and influence the implementation of development priorities of the country and the European Union. The development of public services requires identifying existing barriers in the area of public governance as well as possibilities for their improvement and then proposing a set of instruments to improve the service management process.Originality/value: The results of the research can be used in the process of management of public services by public administration units in the context of increasing the universal availability of these services and improving their quality. The results of the analysis may provide a source of knowledge for both national and regional economic policy actors as well as European Union decision-making bodies in the area of public support to improve the availability of public services in the next development programming perspectives.