A public service is an action, institution or provision promoted by the state to guarantee equality among citizens.
Equal rights
The administration of a country must ensure that all citizens have access to the same rights. For this, it is essential that there be a series of public services in strategic sectors of society: education, health, transport, security, waste treatment, employment and a long etcetera. Obviously, all of them are financed by paying taxes and are managed by public servants.
The responsibility of the state
The person in charge of public services is the state administration, but this does not mean that it is necessarily a public company that offers a service, since sometimes the administration hires a private company to take over the management of a public service. This means that the citizen receives a specific service (for example, access to water) but it is not essential that the entity be publicly owned. This circumstance is accompanied by a certain controversy and for some it is a way of privatizing the powers of the state and is something rejectionable. For the defenders of the privatization, the subcontracting of services through a private entity supposes an economic saving for the coffers of the state. Apart from the debate on who provides a service (the state directly or a private company), there is a general agreement on the convenience of facilitating access to the different services to avoid social imbalances.
The idea that governs any public service is the equality of all individuals, regardless of their social status or any other circumstance.
In different nations, the concept of public service is specified in different institutions (state, federal, regional, municipal, etc.).
Public services according to ideology
From a liberal or neoliberal approach, the public sector should be reduced and limited as much as possible. According to this political vision, the state should intervene as little as possible in the lives of citizens, who should be free to make decisions about their needs.
From a social democratic perspective, it is understood that the state has the obligation to cover certain needs so that the economic interests of companies do not turn public services into a lucrative activity, that is, into a business.
