## Citizen‘s Charter

Modernization of Public Administration Department (Odbor modernizace veřejné správy)
» czech » english »

### Assessing service quality – the benefits and limits of different assessment methods

A joint initiative of the OECD and the European Union, principally financed by the EU
Prezentaci si můžete stáhnout také ve formátech: ppt, odp, pdf

#### Elke Löffler and Salvador Parrado

#### Which assessment tool to choose?

There pictures is in another documents.

#### Which quality assessment approach to choose? (1)

- Self-assessment by public agencies
- Gets ownership but can be myopic and selfdeluding
- Unlikely to be trusted by other stakeholders
- External assessment by ‘auditors/inspectors’
- Independent but not always trusted by the agency
- Asks ‘hard questions’ but little understanding of context?
- Either superficial or expensive

#### Which quality assessment approach to choose? (2)

- Peer review by similar organisations
- Independent but “critical friends” may want to be polite rather than too critical
- Well-informed judgements by experts working in similar contexts
- Comments likely to be taken seriously by the agency
- Effectiveness of benchmarking clubs etc. depends on how structured their approach is (see peer review process of Improvement and Development Agency in the UK)
- Can be embedded into ongoing learning relationship between the agency and its partner agencies
- 360° appraisal by relevant stakeholders
- Independent
- Diversity of judgements
- Results likely to be seen as important by the agency
- Varying levels of understanding of the context
- Can be embedded into ongoing learning relationship between the agency and its stakeholders

#### Success factors

- Do not rely solely on repeat self-assessments
- Bring in a professional external auditor from time to time (e.g. certified EFQM assessor)
- Ask your stakeholders (actual and potential clients, politicians, business, etc.) about their perceptions of service quality
- Form a team with colleagues from other organisations to carry out peer reviews and to discuss solutions to identified problems

#### The EFQM – CAF Model as an assessment framework

#### Exercise: Get started with a focused self-assessment

- Evaluate the customer-orientation of your organisation against the criteria of the Charter Mark Self-Assessment Tool
- Invite some colleagues of the charter project team to come to your organisation to have their views on the way you deliver services and the results they produce
- Start collecting data so that you can assess how your organisation performance against the defined targets