New public management in Latvia: Variations in openness to customer requests in public agencies

The transformation of public administration in Latvia represents a commitment to continuous modernization. New Public Management (NPM) has under different names, such as "reinventing government" been proffered as an improvement of productivity and quality in relation to traditional public administration characterized by bureaucracy. In addition to adopting managerial systems from business, advocates of NPM include promises to alter the relationship between public services and the individual. Commitments to transparency and service declarations customarily follow in the wake of new forms of governance marked by privatization and contracting out of public services. This article reports on an empirical investigation of responsiveness to customer requests in a sample of Latvian public agencies at the national and local level. The survey included requests for basic information about the agency regarding the budget, expenditures, staffing, information services, and complaint procedures. In analyzing the findings, it is hypothesized that variation in service levels will correlate with agency type and the language spoken by the client.