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The Good Governance
Model
"brings together the three
main elements of governance:
(1) multiple stakeholders (2) political and
social values
(3) policy outcomes
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The Good Governance Model developed by Governance
International provides a new framework for policy-makers,
public managers and community leaders who want to improve
the governance capacity of their organisation.
It focuses on improving quality of life not just on quality
of services. And it focuses on how to improve trust and other
important social values and not just ‘efficiency, effectiveness
and economy’.
Unlike traditional quality management systems, our Model is not
just for assessing quality but also a
catalyst for change. It activates citizens and other
stakeholders and mobilises new resources in the form of volunteering
and fundraising, and it builds trust and develops leadership
across a range of stakeholders.
The Good Governance Model offers a flexible framework
which can be used in a number of different ways:
- As a self-assessment test to develop a first
understanding of how well your organisation manages governance
issues.
- As a tool for benchmarking stakeholder perceptions
and developing a 'Governance Balanced Scorecard'.
- As a tool for the Governance Health Check to improve your partnership working.
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| The Governance Self-Assessment Test
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The GovSat should be the first step you take when you want to improve the governance capacity of your organisation. This tool provides you with a general understanding of the key governance issues facing your organisation and tells you how your organisation measures up.
Find out how you perform on our governance self-assessment.
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Our understanding of good governance |
If your organisation wants to achieve better outcomes and
improve partnership working you need to know what good governance
looks like.
We start from the belief that any understanding of good governance
has to be context-specific and is likely
therefore to differ between organisations and stakeholders.
However, the Good Governance Model points out the key building
blocs of our understanding of public governance. In particular,
it
- assumes a multiple stakeholder scenario
where collective problems can no longer be solved only by public
authorities but require the co-operation of other players (citizens,
business, voluntary sector, media, etc.) – and where sometimes
practices such as mediation, arbitration and self-regulation
may be even more effective than public action;
- recognises that it is not enough to reason only in terms
of the logic of ends and means, inputs and outputs, and
that values (accountability, transparency, honesty, etc.) are
important in themselves;
- deals with policy outcomes which an organisation
cannot directly control and for which it must share
responsibility with other stakeholders in the public, private
and voluntary sectors;
- is inherently political, concerned with
the interplay of actors seeking to exercise power over each other
to further their own interests – and therefore cannot be
left to managerial or professional elites but requires
democratic decision-making;
- must be based on rules, both the formal
rule of law (constitutions, legistlation, regulation) and informal
rules (codes of ethics, customs, traditions), but assumes that
negotiation between stakeholders seeking to use their power can
alter the importance of these rules;
- accepts that networks and partnerships may be
more appropriate decision-making structures than hierarchical
authority or market structures in many circumstances;
- recognises that organisational leadership therefore needs
to be complemented by leadership of networks and partnerships which
ensures policy coherence across organisations, sectors and levels
of government as well as over time;
- acknowledges that good quality public services increase user
satisfaction but not necessarily public trust, which
only comes with transparent decision-making, accountability and
democratic dialogue.
From this governance perspective, an excellent agency needs
to be more than an excellent service provider. It must also be
excellent in the way in which it discharges its political, social,
environmental and ethical responsibilities in its wider community.
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What
does Governance International do? |
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Governance International helps public and nonprofit agencies
to improve partnership working through a range of practical products. All our work is based
on the Good Governance Model.
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What
are the target groups for Governance International? |
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The target groups are public and nonprofit agencies and their
key stakeholders. GI products are designed to bring together
all partners who are relevant to the key policy issues which
concern our customers.
Where public or nonprofit agencies are members of a strategic
partnership we would normally expect our customer to be the strategic
partnership itself rather than a public or nonprofit agency.
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Why is
there a need for the Good Governance Model when the EFQM Excellence
Model is already being used by many public and voluntary sector
organisations? |
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The current version of the EFQM Excellence Model focuses mainly
on the quality of management. The GI Good Governance Model complements
the EFQM Excellence Model by focusing mainly on the quality of
governance. There are indeed some governance aspects are addressed
to a degree in the EFQM Excellence Model, but Governance
International believes that governance issues require much
greater emphasis, especially for organisations in the public
domain.
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The Common
Assessment Framework of the EU Member States (CAF) has been specifically
designed for the public sector. How is the Good Governance
Model different from the CAF? |
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The latest version of the CAF clearly includes more governance
elements than previously. Nevertheless, the CAF has been specifically
developed as an 'easy entry' version of the EFQM Excellence Model
and is still strongly based on it. We believe that it is not
sufficient to patch up the EFQM model with some governance issues
- it is necessary to start with governance issues as the central
concern and build a proper model on this basis.
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In which
ways is the Good Governance Model different from the Balanced
Scorecard? |
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The Balanced Scorecard has become a widely used framework
for the reporting of financial and nonfinancial business results
in the private sector, particularly in the US and Europe. It
is now also increasingly used in the
public and voluntary sectors, although many agencies are still
unclear how to adapt it to their own context.
Governance International has developed the Balanced
Scorecard further for use in the public domain. We have developed
more policy-relevant dimensions for measurement of results (with
a much clearer focus on
quality of life outcomes) and have strengthened the multi-stakeholder
approach in the Balanced Scorecard.
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How does
GI address private sector organisations ? |
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The Good Governance Model is geared towards providers of public services. Given that the private sector is increasingly a key provider of public services, and, a key partner with public services in multi-agency partnerships it is included within the Good Governance Model as a key stakeholder.
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What does the Governance Health Check add to the CPA (comprehensive performance assessment) in England? |
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CPA in England has evolved from focusing in the early days primarily on the services provided by the council, to looking increasingly at its overall corporate capacity and performance and its success in working with other key local partners. From 2009, CPA will be replaced by the new Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA), which will focus on assessing the risks to delivering the priority outcomes in the local area by all the main agencies working in partnership, not just the council. This approach is closer to that of the Governance Model, and using the self-assessment toolkit or having an externally facilitated Governance Health Check would be an invaluable way to prepare for CAA in 2009.
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Why does
Governance International use the term 'governance' even though
it does not yet exist in many languages and even in English the
term is not yet widely used and is frequently misunderstood? |
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Clearly, in the UK the term governance has been used in a rather unimaginative way - it has by and large been used to refer to quite technical issues, such as the structure and code of conduct of management boards of public agencies or the appropriate system for political management (e.g. the choice between a locally elected mayor and a leader-cabinet system). Actually, 'good governance' includes much wider issues, such as community participation, transparency and social inclusion - things which everybody agrees are important but which nobody measures. Governance International believes that it is important to measure these things - what does not get measured does not get managed.
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Submit a question |
Now click on the "Send"
button
If you prefer not to use the online form you can
submit the same information by phone, fax or post to the address
given below. |
Dr. Elke
Loeffler
Chief Executive
Governance International
2nd Floor, 3 Brindley Place
Birmingham B1 2JB UK
tel: + 44 (0) 121 698 8743
fax: + 44 (0) 121 698 8600
email: elke.loeffler@govint.org
Registration Number: 4488214
Companies House London
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