A call for creating service standards

AUTHORIZING PRIVATE firms to render government services is an excellent idea for many services, but not for all ("If the Registry really wants our love...," Op-Ed, Feb. 11). Vital protective services such as police or immigration cannot outsource their functions to private organizations. Yet, government operations can work more effectively if a) there are customer-oriented service standards, and b) private-sector system designers compete to obtain cost-effective compliance with these standards.

Voting systems for federal elections illustrate the need. Currently, there are no customer-oriented voting standards, such as a maximum waiting time to cast a vote. Manufacturers of voting machines rather than designers of voting systems compete to sell their products.

As the quality of service to voters is not the major concern of the manufacturers, the voting systems are not working well.

Even if voting machines were reliable, easy to audit, and simple to use, mismatches between patterns of voter arrivals and the deployments of voting machines and personnel across precincts could cause excessive "queuing," leading to frustration and loss of would-be voters.

Any government services, outsourced or not, could be improved if systems rendering these services were created by designers in compliance with customer-oriented servicing standards.

ALEXANDER S. BELENKY
RICHARD C. LARSON
Boston

The former writer is a visiting scholar and professor at the Massachusetts of Technology. The latter is director of the Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals at MIT.