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The Social Security Administration considers the way it deals with citizens to be of fundamental importance. That importance has meant, with the objective of improving, that the need has arisen to develop a global strategy in the area of face-to-face service so that when citizens visit out offices they have the most positive experience possible. Therefore it is necessary to encourage all elements that help public support centres improve their positive image and establish quality principles that give information on face-to-face service.

In addition, face-to-face service that the Social Security provides to citizens in highly diverse according to each organisation´s area of responsibility. It has some very pronounced special features:

• there are a high number of people attended to.
• management procedures are performed (such as claiming debts) that do not immediately benefit the interested parties.
• the information that the personnel dealing with the public work with is highly complex, which tends to require multi-skilled personnel.
• the size and vagueness of the terms with which the Social Security´s jurisdiction is identified means that people come to carry out processes that are not managed by the Social Security.

In the current context of adapting the Civil Service to meet the new challenges that are before it, the concepts of quality, improvement of services, modernisation and accessibility to citizens take on huge importance. The Civil Service, and within it, the Social Security, is committed to tackling the challenge of improving the channels of service to the public.

In this regard the experience accumulated in face-to-face service shows that the main demands of citizens are:

• immediate service.
• quick service.
• resolution of the issue in a short space of time.
• friendly service.

Face-to-face service at the Social Security is structured through a network of local or regional offices that cover the whole of Spain. As at 1 January 2011 this network was made up of over 1000 public support centres, which are distributed as follows:

• 438 Support and Information Centres of the INSS (CAISS); of which 111 are urban and 327 regional.
• 104 Local Offices of the ISM.
• 255 TGSS Administrative Offices and 227 Debt Collection Units that are not integrated into a TGSS Administrative Office.

This broad network means that the principle of accessibility and immediacy in the provision of services as a requirement for excellence is achieved (in the sense of quality management) dealing with the public, on which the existence of Provincial Directorates in each Social Security organisation was based.