Driving Public Service Innovation Through Citizen Feedback: Insights from Online Reviews

Innovation in public services is vital for enhancing citizen satisfaction, trust, and value creation. This study investigates how unstructured citizen feedback, sourced from online review platforms, can act as a catalyst for public service innovation. Drawing on 8,043 Trustpilot reviews (2020–2023), we analyse user-generated content related to three major Italian public service providers—Poste Italiane, Trenitalia, and INPS—using topic modelling. Our findings uncover recurring inefficiencies that hinder service quality, including digital dysfunctions, chronic delays, inadequate customer service, and unprofessional operator conduct. These “user voices” reflect authentic, experience-based knowledge that can be instrumentalised to inform innovation pathways, which can be transformed into actionable insight, as we exemplify in this work. Theoretically, this study contributes to the literature on networked governance by framing citizens not as passive recipients but as co-producers of public value whose feedback drives iterative service refinement. Furthermore, our results highlight the importance of aligning technological tools with actual user needs and expectations, underscoring that the effectiveness of innovation lies not merely in the adoption of digital solutions but in their contextual integration and usability. Limitations include the reliance on potentially biased online reviews, the confounding effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on service delivery, and the challenges inherent in interpreting unsupervised topic models. Nonetheless, this approach demonstrates how spontaneous, large-scale digital feedback can provide strategic insights for developing more responsive, sustainable, and user-centred public services. Ultimately, public service innovation rooted in citizen feedback not only improves functional outcomes but fosters long-term trust, transparency, and legitimacy.