The pandemic has been (and continues to be) a challenge to public services globally. It revealed that public services that are managed under a neoliberal agenda and thus are evaluated against their cost-effectiveness, are threatened to fail delivering appropriate services to those in most desperate need. This can also be transferred from health care systems to other segments of public services, like education. The paper discusses the features and potential shortcomings of current management paradigms and emerging trends that could help aligning public service management better with the demands of their clients and with changing environments.