The Spanish public administrations must live up to the citizens' expectations of today's society. That is why quality should guide the management and delivery of public services, which implies a continuous improvement of public services and, above all, a permanent dialogue between expectations and benefits. This complex objective must be addressed with instruments that facilitate the management of services to the citizen with efficiency criteria, thus evidencing the good governance of the public.

In this environment, the Service Charters are perhaps the most genuine instrument for responding to the challenges of public services. Its use, widespread for years for the three levels of government, facilitates the homogenization of quality commitments in a decentralized state but whose citizen-users are unitary recipients of public services and services.

Precisely for the promotion of policies and programs of quality, excellence and evaluation in the Spanish public administrations through cooperation and collaboration, the Inter-Administrative Network of Quality in Public Services was launched in October 2005. A particularly significant result of the activity of this Network is the “Letter of Commitments to the Quality of Spanish Public Administrations”, approved by the Sectoral Conference of Public Administration in 2009 and which established, for the first time, common quality commitments for the three levels of our Public Administration. It is no coincidence that, among these commitments, the eighth made express reference to the elaboration and dissemination of Letters of Service of public bodies.

The document we are now presenting seeks to respond to this commitment with the excellent collaborative work in which representatives of the General Administration of the State, the Autonomous Communities and the Local Entities have intervened, a publication that will certainly allow the use of shared language and achieve the coordination and coherence of the efforts, as well as the exploitation of synergies. Users have the right to know the characteristics of the services they receive and the conditions in which they are provided. This practical exercise of transparency will undoubtedly contribute to the improvement of internal processes in organisations and to the stimulation of work teams. Above all, however, it will help to ensure that citizens enjoy public services in accordance with their expectations.