No, Public Services Aren’t Products

As a follow-up from my article on «Why the Product Model Stumbles in the Public Sector», I want to challenge Jeff Pattons idea that “Everything is a Product”.

The notion that everything is a product oversimplifies things, as there are always exceptions. For instance, public services aren’t products in the traditional sense — and trying to treat them as such is unfortunate. Instead, public services are often comprised of a range of products that together make up a cohesive service.

That said, product thinking has still made its way into boardrooms, digital teams — and in some countries such as Norway; the public sector. While it promises clarity, ownership, and measurable outcomes, it can also misalign with the complex, multifaceted nature of public services. And don’t get me wrong, I acknowledge it has brought much-needed structure to chaos in many places.

Products are transactional. Services are relational.

Earlier this year, I fell into a rabbit hole — which I often do, and it was in regards to the concept of trust, to be presise — and I came across a distinction made by Rachel Botsman in her book «Who can you trust? — how technology brought us together». I hadn’t thought much about this before, but she writes that there are two types of trust — transactional and relational.

Transactional trust is built on consistency, reliability, and delivery. Did the thing do what it was supposed to do, did it deliver the expected value? While relational trust is built on care, understanding, and shared purpose. Do I believe you see me, hear me, and have my best interests at heart?

For me this was an epiphany, since trust and value often go hand in hand, the same distinction between transactional and relational therefore also should easily transfer to value.

Product value is transactional — does it work, is it fast, is it efficient, is the quality as expected in relation to the cost? Service value, especially in the public sector, is relational — does it support me over time, respect my rights and my dignity, and help me navigate complexity?

Break the Relationship, and the Transaction No Longer Matters.

Take a recent example: Growing numbers of individuals — myself included — organisations, and even governments in Europe are moving away from American tech products — Not because these products stopped performing well. On the contrary —they offer unmatched transactional value. But the relational trust has been broken.

Whether it’s data privacy concerns, geopolitical behavior, or a perception of misalignment with European values, people are switching to alternatives that, in many cases, don’t deliver the same technical quality or scale. And still — they’re leaving.

Because once relational trust is gone, transactional performance doesn’t matter. A well-designed service that fails to build trust — because it feels robotic, unfair, or disconnected — will never be redeemed by its technical reliability. But a service that builds and maintains relational trust can recover from friction, setbacks, even failure. Because people forgive mistakes if they believe you’re truly there for them.

This is why applying a product lens to public services is risky. It risks reducing the work to a set of deliverables, features, or handoffs — while ignoring the experience of being served, the dignity of being seen, and the trust that binds people to institutions.

Public services don’t exist in isolation. They must be governed — and the public sector is a steward of mandate, trust, power dynamics and human need. When we focus only on what is delivered, we miss how it lives in people’s lives. We miss the whole: the understanding for the assignment, the power delegated, the resources entrusted, and the responsibilities carried by individuals and institutions. We lose the societal perspective — and with it, our connection to democratic values.

And when we lose sight of these things, we stop designing for complexity.

Because once relational trust is gone, transactional performance doesn’t matter.

Public Services are Not Experienced as Product Touchpoints.

A product can be designed, built, shipped, and sold. And in today’s agile world, it doesn’t sit still — it’s iterated constantly to improve performance, usability, and product-market-fit. But those iterations are mostly about refining the thing.

When we break services into products, teams, and features, we risk designing something that makes sense to us, but not to the person on the other side. We risk optimizing parts while neglecting the lived experience of the whole.

A service, on the other hand unfolds with the users and the system. It adapts not only to feedback, but to context, media, trust, policy, politics, power, and human behaviour. The iterations are about supporting people in complex situations — not just improving delivery.

Thinking of a child welfare intervention or unemployment assistance as a product flattens the human complexity involved. It suggests a beginning, middle, and end — when in reality, services live in networks of relationships, history, needs, and follow-up.

Final Thoughts

It’s important for me to stress that applying a service mindset instead of a product mindset, isn’t a rejection of innovation — it’s an invitation to build better systems that reflect the realities of those who depend on them. So don’t read this as a dismissal of product thinking. I’ve used it for over a decade. I’ve benefitted from it. Product thinking has brought much-needed structure, ownership, and clarity to myself and many others.

It’s taught us to prioritise user needs, to iterate based on feedback, and to make decisions grounded in value.

But in my experience, public services ask something different of us.

Product thinking gets us part of the way. But to go further, we need a model built for relationships, not just transactions. For systems, not just screens. For trust, not just output.

We don’t need to throw out product thinking.
We just need to grow beyond it.

We need to build a public service model that honours what they really are.