Introduction
The use of quality management tools and systems, for a long time confined
to the private sector, has since the early 1990’s started to permeate
into the public sector in Europe as part of its strive for modernization,
better public management, increased performance and a stronger “customer”
focus. In the course of the last decade, various quality management
tools and systems started to be used in the public sector across the
EU but it was not possible to speak of a common understanding and language
of quality.
In this context, the Innovative Public Services Group (IPSG) developed
the Common Assessment Framework (CAF), a simple and easy-to-use tool
that could help public administrations across the EU to understand and
employ Total Quality Management (TQM) techniques, to embark on their
”journey to excellence” and to compare themselves with similar organisations
in Europe. CAF has been developed by public administrations for public
administrations and reflects all the needs of public sector organisations.
The guidelines, developed e-tools, training and last but not least
the low cost help the CAF-users to obtain the major outcomes:
- A better awareness of the total quality approach at all levels of
the organisation, including the concern for efficiency, effectiveness
and citizen/client orientation;
- The identification of strengths and areas for improvement;
- The input into ongoing improvement activities;
- The promotion of the exchange of views in the organisation, the
basis for a sustained change management;
- The assessment of the effectiveness of the improvement actions by
repeating the CAF application on a regular basis;
- The exchange of experiences with other CAF-users all over Europe,
to learn from their strengths and to help them with their improvements