Both at conceptual and experimental level, there are now signals that clearly point to the integration of management, transparency and accountability features within modern Public Administrations.
ISO defines a Quality Management System “the organisational structure together with the planning, processes, resources and documentation that are needed to achieve the quality objectives, and to provide continual improvement of the products and services that are being provided”.
However, for a local authority “sustainable success will only result from the implementation of an integral Quality Management System that addresses the needs and expectations of all interested parties”.
This kind of openness is termed ‘transparency’ and it occurs when the “processes, procedures, methods, data sources and assumptions used by the local government” during a Quality Management System building up and maintenance “are made available to all interested parties and citizens and collectively ensure that (they) are made aware of their roles, rights and duties”.
For instance, a well performing street cleaning service also requires that citizens are careful not to throw litter in the streets.
If we take on this notion of ‘accountability towards the community’ that can be read between the lines of the ISO document, the next question is indeed what local government should be accountable for. The answer is quite obvious: performance.
Implementation of a Quality Management System in local government
Starting from a position where some (or none) of the Public Administration’s areas of activity are included in a Quality Management System, it is suggested that the top management should perform a self-assessment test based on 39 ‘reliability’ indicators.
These are typically more related to measuring the success of public interventions in terms of the quality of life changes which they bring about for the constituency, rather than the quality of activities as such. If one or more indicators showed a weak performance level, this would be the sign that the local government is operating ‘below the reliability line‘. Then the first goal for top managers is to reach minimum conditions of reliability for all the key process and services, by implementing an ‘integral’ Quality Management System.
Quality certification according to the ISO 9001:2000 standards must not be regarded as the final objective: once a local government has achieved an acceptable level of reliability, “it should look beyond conformance to performance”, aiming to improve its overall efficiency through the utilization of ISO 9004:2000 and/or other excellence models.
This shifts the focus from managerial excellence to excellent governance, a concept that transcends organizational borders and goes further into the multi-stakeholder environment that was partially sketched by the ‘piano concert‘ analogy in the previous section.
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conforming to specifications (ISO 9000, Service Charter);
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meeting corporate and social objectives (Balanced Scorecard I),
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aligning inputs, processes, outputs and outcomes (EFQM, Balanced Scorecard II),
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meeting or exceeding customer expectations (the ServQual instrument),
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producing emotional, passionate commitment on the part of users.
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Assessing the quality of public services and the citizen/customer satisfaction have been major concerns for the promoters and supporters of the Government ‘reinvention’ movement in the past 25 years. Together with the goal of continual improvement, these are also known as the three main pillars of a Quality Management System.
During the 1990s, the wide diffusion of service charters has started to provide the citizen/customer with a ‘prior information’ about the kinds and levels of service (s)he can expect from a public authority, as well as a private organisation supplying public services (e.g. garbage collection). This was more related with the original notion of quality as product performance control than with the modern one of process and activity management. However, it has helped integrate the targets of efficiency and effectiveness with a greater attention to end users in the Public Administration ‘process’.
More recently, the need has arisen for a more integrated view of the process and its results, in light of the recognition that not necessarily a good Government leads to good results, or to results that are perceived as such by its constituency; this is partly related to the ‘networked’ nature of modern Governments, being at the centre of complex relationships involving other public institutions, some private/business entities, and the citizens themselves. Shifting from the quality of services concept to the quality of government/governance is like ensuring that “good pianos play good music” together.
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