摘要
The situation of the contemporary economic systems is based on their ability to ensure optimal response to the customer needs. There are several important groups of clients, who may determine development processes and who are recipients of public services. They include： residents, entrepreneurs, tourists, and State Treasury. Local governments are equipped with a range of legal instruments to provide public services addressed to the selected clients. The objective of this paper is to present the application of the AHP method to assess the significance of the selected categories of public services for different groups of clients in Poland. The results allow setting priorities for future policy and adjust the tasks to the specific expectations of each group of clients. The model of assessment of public services was built using the analytic hierarchy process （AHP）. Since the 1970＇s, this multicriteria decision-support method has been used by researchers and practitioners in many areas of socioeconomic life. The case study presented in this paper involved 14 experts--public administration workers in one of the districts in Southern Poland. The survey consisted of two stages. First, they assessed--using the AHP--the influence of each group of customers on local development processes. The most important was ＂business＂ （priority 38.7%）, followed by ＂tourists＂ （29.7%）, ＂citizens＂ （26.1%）, and ＂central administration＂ （5.5%）. Second, they evaluated at the five-point Liken scale the influence of over 20 different public services with respect to different groups of clients. The results were aggregated using arithmetic mean and multiplied by the priorities of the clients. The synthesized final score indicated the most significant public activities overall, which were ＂roads＂ （4.16）, ＂transport＂ （3.93）, and ＂tourism＂ （3.84）.
