Service Delivery Practices And Its Challenges: The Case Of Addis Ababa Vital Events Registration Agency

Abstract

The main objective of the study is to investigate the practices and challenge of service delivery in Addis Ababa City Vital Events Registration Agency (AACVERA). The study assesses services delivery practices in terms of five services quality dimensions, namely: tangibility, responsiveness, reliability, assurance and empathy. A mixed research approach and descriptive survey design was used. A questionnaire was used to gather quantitative data while semi structured interview was employed to collect qualitative data. The study sample in terms of the respondents covered randomly selected 291 customers and 80 employees of AACVERA. Semi structured interview was also conducted to probe views and opinions of five purposely selected officials of Addis Ababa City Vital Events Registration Agency. The data collected was analyzed with the aid of descriptive statistical techniques such as frequencies, percentages and mean score. The result indicated that there are gaps and limitations in terms of tangibility, responsiveness, reliability, assurance and empathy of service at Addis Ababa vital events registration agency. The finding of this study reveals that the services of Vital Event Registration Agency did not match with the mission it has put for itself and these determinants remain challenging the service delivery of the Agency. The data obtained from field survey has revealed that the service delivery is inefficient to satisfy the demand of the customers. The study also found that lack of resource, lack of capacity building training for staff, lack of leadership skill and management commitment, a shortcoming on the existing rules and regulation, high prevalence of corruption in relation to vital event service, customers congestion/overcrowding in the office, regular system failures and power interruption, lack the necessary skills among employees to digitalize critical event services, lack of awareness among customer and lack appropriate information communication technology to support vital event service are the major challenges that imped service delivery practice in case of vital events registration agency at Addis Ababa. Thus, the study contends that the Vital Event Registration Agency may tackle the dissatisfaction of customers addresses these challenges and if it improves its good governance practices in the provision of vital event registration services.