Service design has been introduced as a key driver for public service innovation. However, there is a lack of foundation of how service design should be applied in public area. There are hardly considerations of public administration who is the substantive provider of public service. It widens a gap between service design approach for public area and actual public administration. The study established the framework of problem-definition for local public service design in a way of bridging the gap. The nature and characteristics of service design was articulated from the perspective of public context. The area of public service for service design was scoped by content analysis: the service that based on citizen’s daily life, has a series of process and various stakeholders involve in by integrating service design and public administrative perspective. Subsequently, the concept of design-led problem- definition was identified from the theories of problem solving methodology. Finally, the framework for identifying specific problem space of service providers, related service and users in comprehensive current state of the problem was established to optimize the concept of problem-definition in local public service design.