This paper explains a “Polycentric System of Public Services” in Aomori Prefecture, which is a system of “Policy Marketing”, and confirms its effectiveness.
Since 1999 Aomori Prefecture has constructed and advanced a system of performance management using community benchmarking. This system is focused on building a “Polycentric System of Public Services” applying the idea of marketing to public management.
Customarily marketing has been considered mainly as an activity for promoting sales. However, recently marketing is being applied not only for promoting and selling products, but also for producing products, services, and systems to make those concerned (providers, customers, etc.) continuously satisfied through building numerous sustainable relationships.
This idea of marketing can be applied to the field of local management and public policy. There are many providers of public policy and public services, for example, local governments, NPOs, citizen groups, private corporations, schools, families, individual citizens, and so on. Each of the providers in response to the needs of customers provides policies and services to satisfy these needs. For the providers to try and satisfy the needs of customers much better, they can combine their activities for providing policies and services. As it is, there is a “Policy Market” of these policies and activities, which are produced by the various combinations of providers. This means that it can be important to make an effective system of marketing, when a region wishes to produce better results.
A system of Policy Marketing in Aomori Prefecture was constructed through 5 steps, (1) analyzing and visualizing needs of policies in Aomori, (2) constructing a benchmarking system to check whether the needs of these policies are being realized, (3) sharing this information among policy providers in Aomori, (4) applying a practical means to realize the needs of policies, (5) monitoring and arranging for feedback regarding benchmark trends and activities to meet the needs.
Through the construction of this system, Aomori Prefecture tries to realize a “Polycentric System of Public Services” and the promotion of activities to rectify regional problems.
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