Northwestern University Educational Resource Center AUTHOR: RAPACON, ALEJANDRO JR. G. TITLE: Quality of Service of Local Civil Registry Offices Year: 2014 Acc. No.: 661322 Abstract: This study assessed the quality of service of Local Civil Registry Offices (LCROs) in Ilocos Norte by analyzing the expectations and perceptions of the LCRO employees and their clients on the quality of services they provided. The descriptive design was followed adapting the SERVQUAL research instrument of Parasuraman et al (1995). Involved in the study were 76 employees of the 23 LCROs in Ilocos Norte and 248 clients. Frequency count, percentage, and weighted mean were used to analyze and interpret the data gathered. The LCRO employees are in the middle adulthood stage of development, predominantly females, most of them are college graduates, who have spent considerable years of service in the government, permanent as to tenure, but have not been sent to trainings, conferences, and seminars. Very few employees are working in the LCROs. Majority of the LCROs do not have annual fund allocation for capital outlay. Funds are allocated for trainings, seminars and conventions; however, half of the staff never attended training for the past five years. Only one LCRO has allocated funds for social services. Majority of the LCROs is equipped with desktop computers, printers and laptops. All of the LCROs have filling cabinets. On the other side, majority of the LCROs do not have photocopiers. Typewriters are still used by most of the LCROs. Majority of the LCROs are using electric fans to ventilate the office. The expectations of the employees were all very high along the five service quality dimensions. Assurance dimension was expected the most in the delivery of quality service while tangibles was the least. The five LCROs rated by the employees with the highest levels of expectations were Bangui, Banna, Batac City, Currimao and Pinili. Conversely, in descending order, the LCROs of San Nicolas and Badoc had the lowest level of expectations. Along perceptions, the employees gave a very high rating on the four service quality dimensions of responsiveness, assurance, empathy, and reliability, while only high for tangibles. The clients had very high expectations on empathy, assurance, responsiveness, and reliability dimensions while they gave only a rating of high for the tangibles. The top three LCROs with the highest level of expectations were Bangui, Pinili, and Adams having very high ratings. Along clients’ perceptions, they gave very high ratings on responsiveness, assurance and empathy, while they indicated high ratings along reliability and tangibles. Most of the city/municipalities received very high perceptions from the clienteles. Based on the clients, the LCROs of Bangui, Adams, Pinili, Solsona, and Dumalneg were the top performing offices. Generally, the performance of the LCROs is lower than what clients expected in the LCRos of San Nicolas, Carasi and Piddig wherein they performed higher than the clients’ expectations while the LCROs of Bangui and Burgos performed according to the expectations of the clients. For the LCROs that performed lower than expectations of their clients, the LCRO of Currimao and Dingras posted the highest gap while the lowest gap was noted in Nueva Era. On the whole, gaps existed between employees’ and clients’ expectations and perceptions, respectively on the items in the SERVQUAL instrument. Based on the results of the study, a framework for the development of the Local Civil Registry Offices was proposed. The Local Civil Registry Office Development Plan should focus on four components: (1) enhancement of tangibles and working environment; (2) networking with non-government organizations (NGOs); (3) capability building; and (4) LGU support system to the LCROs. This study concluded that the quality of services provided by the LCROs along the five dimensions of quality service do not meet the employees’ and clients’ expectations. It is recommended that the LCROs will formulate a development plan based from the framework. In addition, a follow-up study should be conducted three years after this study to document the effects of the strategies proposed by this study. .