Assessment of Public Administration in the Field of Small Business: Empirical Analysis of Points of Single Contact Efficiency in Slovakia | Hodnotenie verejnej správy v oblasti živnostenského podnikania: Empirická analýza efektívnosti jednotných kontaktných miest na Slovensku

he agenda of small business in Slovakia is administered by Points of Single Contact (PCS). The aim of PCS was to establish efficient assistance to entrepreneurs in dealing with business license, but also to streamline the procedure of district individual administrative offices at the center. To investigate how the new units are efficient in their role was the goal of the research presented in this paper. Two approaches were applied. First, qualitative analysis based on questionnaire survey among entrepreneurs was done within all 50 PCS. Its goal was to learn how entrepreneurs view the quality and efficiency of PCS from the perspective of their needs. The analysis shows that the PCS are rated mostly positively, as entrepreneurs evaluate the average quality level of services provided by PCS fairly highly (4.2 out of 5). On the other hand, entrepreneurs assess the quality of business environment as low to moderate (2.7). Second, quantitative analysis of efficiency based on evaluation of inputs into outputs transformation was done on all 50 PCS. The goal of this empirical analysis was to compare all PCS from the aspect of their performance and to find factors, which may influence their efficiency. Nonparametric Data Envelopment Analysis and Malmquist index procedures were used to investigate static and dynamic nature of PCS efficiency. The results of this study show that the proportion of efficient units is 16%, the average efficiency is 0.72. There are some statistically significant differences in average technical efficiency scores among regions. Analysis of the associations of efficiency measures and entrepreneurs perception of PCS shows weak negative correlation. Comparison of result of years 2009 and 2010 showed growth of TFP productivity of PCS by 7.9%, which is a result of a positive technical change by 15.5%, but also negative technical efficiency change by 6.7%.