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Washington, D.C.-The head of the nation's largest independent union of federal employees told a Washington seminar of public and private sector customer service experts that the key to improved service in the federal sector is to be found in the strong link between employee satisfaction with their jobs and customer satisfaction with the agency's services.

President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said that at agencies where NTEU represents workers, "the most progress" in improving the delivery of services "has come where agencies have embraced labor-management partnership, sought to expand and strengthen employee involvement and recognized the link between employee and customer satisfaction."

Kelley offered her assessment in a presentation at a "national summit" on customer service in federal, state and local governments sponsored by the National Institute for Government Innovation and George Washington University, examining among other issues the role of federal sector unions in providing quality customer service.

The NTEU president traced the development of higher-quality customer service in the federal sector over the past seven years. A 1993 executive order established "customer-driven" service standards for the government; another, a month later, helped to define the role of federal employees and their unions as full partners engaged in meaningful pre-decisional discussions with agency management.

"These executive orders changed the nature of federal sector labor-management relations," she said, "by recognizing the value of input from front-line employees in helping identify and recommend remedies for overcoming obstacles to delivering quality customer service."

She pointed to the significant role played by NTEU and its members in the ongoing modernization of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the most far-reaching restructuring of a government agency in many years. Hundreds of front-line IRS employees who also are NTEU members have helped redesign the agency's structure and processes.

Kelley added that repeated surveys have contradicted the myth that customer service offered by government employees falls short of that available in the private sector. On the contrary, she said, last year when the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), which has been measuring customer satisfaction with the private sector since 1994, was expanded to include 30 customer service segments in 29 federal agencies, the public-private sector comparison was quite favorable.

The survey reported an aggregate score for the federal government of 68.6 percent on a scale of 100, compared to an aggregate private sector score of 73. However, she noted, the government's score is much closer to the index's aggregate score of 71.9 for the private sector service industry, which the survey reported as being more analogous to the type of work performed.

Kelley said NTEU will continue its efforts to improve both customer service and employee satisfaction, noting the important role it plays in helping the government attract the skilled workers it needs. She added that the public sector still is hindered in its recruiting and retention efforts by a continuing pay gap with private sector employers.