Turning a Deaf Ear to Citizens or How to Translate Citizens’ Feedback into Continuous Improvement: Recent Best Practices

This paper intends to propose different approaches to the issue of learning from citizen feedback, deriving from a literature review which evolved from the early 1980s to now. At the same time 2 brand new best practices and two examples of planning accordingly to citizens’ feedback will be analyzed. Conclusions will provide new perspectives for understanding whether complaints are an adequate tool for planning or if they need to be better tailored in order to work in the Public Sector. Contribution to existing research stands in the direction of providing new evidence of best practices for improvement according to citizens’ feedback in a panorama of research that normally limits itself to the logical schemes of cataloging complaints and making them available easily instead of showing evidence of learning deriving from it. The paper concludes with contributions and suggestions for further research and policy challenges with the major question being: Can complaints be improved in their positive input valence or are they part of a larger concept of transparency strategies to create active and well-informed citizens?