Queue Management in a Government Agency: the case of IRN

• Autor(a) principal: Couto, Tiago Mendes
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.26/43827
• topic: IRN; Queues Management; Demand and Capacity Management; Case Study; Root Causes; Portuguese Citizen Card; SST; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

Public agencies are, in some cases, the sole providers of essential services to citizens and often suffer from long queues and criticality. Since queues result from higher demand than the available service capacity, Queue Management starts with Capacity and Demand Management. Queue Theory and Queue Psychology contribute to a better waiting experience, aiming at the comfort of those waiting and the regular operation of the service. This internship report analyzes the queue management of a Portuguese government agency. The internship occurred at the "Instituto dos Registos e do Notariado, I.P." (IRN), a Portuguese Ministry of Justice government agency. The research for this report took place at the IRN headquarters and the Civil Identification Department of the Campus of Justice. Case-study research was conducted with semi-structured Interviews as the primary source of evidence, complemented by direct observations, direct participation, and documentation. The conducted root-cause analysis identified the lack of workforce, the citizens' aging process, the CC's sensitive information, and the accumulation of services during the pandemic restrictions as the root causes for the queues at the registry offices. Also, communication difficulties, long waiting hours, lack of waiting conditions, and high human workload were found. IRN's strategies to deal with queues were to reinforce service capacity during peak demand, offer alternative digital services, optimize services, and improve queue organization in the registry offices. The data suggest that SSTs can improve queues; as such, a set of suggestions for implementing SST in registry offices is presented.