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Co-production by citizens in public services in Europe
During its Presidency of the Council of the European Union, France organised the5th Quality Conference for Public Administration in the European Union from 20-22 October 2008. The theme of the conference was "The Citizen at the Heart of Public Quality". A highlight of the conference was the presentation of the findings of a major citizens survey on the role of service users and citizens in the co-production of public services. The survey, commissioned by the French Treasury, covered citizens in the UK, France, Germany, Denmark and the Czech Republic. The objective of this co-productionstudy was to learn more about the degree and nature of engagement in public services by service users and citizens. In particular, the study was aimed at evaluating the effects of co-production on service quality. Does user engagement make citizens more satisfied? Does the fact that « self-service » is becoming more and more common in the private sector mean that citizens are also more willing to play a greater role in the planning and delivery of public services? The findings of the report were received with great interest by the 1200 participants. You can now read the report - download it from the conference website at http://www.5qualiconference.eu/en/conference/news/108.html.
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Try Just spend 15 minutes filling out our on-line test and find out your organisation measures up! Governance International has launched the first governance self-assessment test for public agencies. The tool is now available on-line after intensive consultation with public managers and policy-makers all over the globe. Please test it out yourself - check how your organisation scores in terms of public governance. Just click here to get to the on-line questionnaire.
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In July 2007, Hazel Blears, Communities and Local Government Secretary, announced plans for participatory budgeting - people organising themselves with council support to help decide local public spending priorities - as part of a package of measures to revive local democracy. Indeed, there have already been a number of UK pilots involving community chests and there are now also a few councils experimenting with mainstream budgets. Ministers hope that the scheme will be extended nationally within five years. You can download information on a number of European PB pilots here:
Therefore, we integrate the lessons learnt elsewhere in our introductory one-day and intensive two-day training courses on participatory budgeting. For more information, please go to the Governance Training Courses . You can also join us on our study trips to European leaders in participatory budgeting to get fresh ideas on how to develop your consultation approaches further. The 'Participatory Budgeting' champions chosen for our 2009 Study Trips include:
Have a look at our upcoming study trip to the Paris region from 4-5 December 2008 (programme as .pdf download) . For more information on our study trips, please go to the Governance Learning Nets. |
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Are you thinking about drafting a service charter in your agency but you are not quite sure how to go about it? Then you should consult our new Service Charter Handbook which has been published by Governance International, SIGMA (a joint EU/OECD programme) and the Czech Ministry of Interior.
The purpose of this Handbook is to encourage and to support public agencies to become more ‘outward-looking’ and improve customer orientation through the effective use of charters. It Handbook has been written with the aim of giving the reader a ‘How To Do It’ guide, with lots of examples and illustrations of service charters. We intend that it will help readers to make a well-informed decision on choosing service charters as a quality improvement tool and to understand the necessary steps in drafting and using service charters effectively. In this way, we hope that the ideas in the book will help readers to make a greater contribution to their agency and to its key stakeholders. Download the Service Charter Handbook in .pdf format (2.4 MB) here. Governance International also provides training courses and consulting on the implementation of service charters. If you have any questions please contact elke.loeffler@govint.org.
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Governance International has been an official sponsor of the World Conference on Development of Cities - WCDC, which was held in the city of Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, from 13 - 16 February 2008. The GI team has been running a well-attended panel on "Good Governance in Action. Some International Experiences". For further information, please download the Governance International presentation here.
Providing expertise on Civil Service Reforms in Mongolia GI Director Gerhard Banner has been asked by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation to provide expertise on current civil service reforms in Mongolia. During his stay in Ulaanbaatar in November 2007 Gerhard had meetings with many high-ranking public officials, including the advisor of the President, the German embassador to Mongolia and MPs of the Mongolian Parliament. He also gave a seminar to inform the Mongolian on the legal framework of the German civil service which has been highly influential in the design of civil service policies in Mongolia.
Seminars on Quality Management in Romania, Lithuania and the Czech Republic Elke Löffler and Salvador Parrado have been running a series of international seminars on quality management for the civil service in Romania, Lithuania and the Czech Republic. The objective of the seminars is to make participants familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of different quality systems and to show successful applications of quality management. The seminar are financed by SIGMA (a joint EU/OECD programme). You can download the programme of our recent seminar in Bucharest in October 2007 in .doc here. Governance International Directors were also invited to participate at the National Quality Conference of the Czech Republic in December 2005 and January 2007. Tony Bovaird and Elke Löffler gave presentations on citizen charters, performance measurement and citizen participation.
Introduction of a quality management system in the Treasury of Morocco The Treasury of Morocco has decided to launch a comprehensive quality improvement programme. The Hanns-Seidel-Foundation in Germany has asked Governance International to help the Treasury to define a quality strategy and to identify the training needs to implement such a strategy. Elke Löffler spent one week at the Treasury in July 2006 to evaluate existing quality projects and to explore which further actions are needed to make a significant impact. The resulting report has now been approved by the Treasury. In particular, the Treasury has agreed to implement an action-oriented training programme which focuses on cultural change and the achievement of visible improvements in delivering financial services. Duration of the project: July - October 2006
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Governance Test of Public Services on Carrick Housing Estates The Governance Test focused on two key issues:
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The Governance Test will be helping service providers on Carrick Housing estates in Cornwall to improve further the quality of life of residents and already excellent levels of consultation.
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The topics of the Governance Test included 'quality of life' issues, such as liveable environment, community safety, health, social well-being and disability issues, and education and training. It also included governance principles, such as transparency, partnership working, sustainability and honest and fair behaviour. A range of different groups who are involved with the housing estates were asked for their views – what is good, what is bad, what is improving and what is getting worse, what needs to be done, who should take the lead in doing it, and how much the respondents would be willing to do themselves. Our focus group members and respondents included tenants, other residents, community groups, voluntary groups, local businesses, the District Council, other public sector bodies and the media. The overall verdict was very favourable, but there were many suggestions for improvements and most of the people we asked (well over 120) were prepared to get more involved in the future in implementing the suggestions which were put forward. The Board of Carrick Housing is now considering an Action Plan, based on these suggestions and is going to get back to all tenants (and everyone involved in the Governance Test) to discuss the next steps. Duration of project: February - July 2005 UNDP Capacity Assessment in Kosovo The Chief Executive of GI, Elke Löffler, had been involved in a Kosovo Capacity Assessment Project by UNDP. The project included an international team of five experts who were looking at all aspects of public management and governance in Kosovo. As the United Nations Interim Administration Mission (UNMIK) in Kosovo plans to transfer further responsibilities to the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General in Kosovo, Mr. Jessen-Petersen, had asked for an evaluation of the effectiveness of curent assistance. The findings of the report were received very favourably by UNMIK and the international donour community. Many recommendations made in the assessment report went into the capacity-building strategy and implementation plan prepared by UNMIK which defines the next steps of international aid provided in Kosovo. Duration of Project: Nov. 2004 - March 2005
Project on Decentralised Service Delivery in Rural Areas
in Cumbria You can download all the presentations of the conference at http://www.cumbria.gov.uk/ruralmatters/defraconference.asp. Duration of the Project: Nov. 2004 - Feb.2005
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out our new Governance Self-Assessment Test
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Löffler, Elke and Vintar, Mirko (eds.) (2004), Improving the Quality of East and West European Public Services, Ashgate Publishers, Aldershot, Hampshire. Please download the form for orders here.
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The second edition of our textbook will be out soon! Bovaird, Tony and Löffler, Elke (eds.) (2008), Public Management and Governance, Routledge, London and New York. Please download the form for orders in Pound Sterling here. Please download the form for orders in Euro here. Please download the form for orders in US Dollars here. |
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IDeA Publication on the contribution of cultural services to solve cross-cutting issues
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Governance International has been commissioned by IDeA to
identify 55 'best practice cases' at local level which demonstrate
how cultural services across the UK are successfully delivering
high quality results across more mainstream services areas.
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GI at the Inspire East Conference
GI participation at Roundtable of The Guardian in September 2007
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From PB projects to mainstreaming PB - what can be learnt from international experiences? This is the issue which Elke Loeffler discussed on a panel at the national PB conference of the Participatory Budgeting Unit. You can learn more about her ideas for the future development of PB in the UK here (.pdf).
Elke Loeffler will again serve as a rapporteur at the 5th EU Quality Conference for Public Agencies to be held in Paris in October 2008. This task involves summing up the lessons from the national best practice cases of all EU countries and presentations held during the conference. Previously, Elke served as rapporteur with Prof. Dr. Geert Bouckaert and Prof. Dr. Christopher Pollitt at the 3rd and 4thQuality Conference for Public Agencies in Rotterdam and Tampere . These conferences tend to attract more than 1200 civil servants from
all levels of government in EU Member countries. Past keynote speakers
included the Secretary General of OECD and Vice-President Al Gore. You can download the 2006 presentation of the rapporteurs in .ppt here. For more information, please check www.4qconference.org/.
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| New on site |
Good governance practices can now be found around the world. GI directors have been very active visiting 'good practice' case studies and learning more about the activities of governance champions. Have a look at the latest GI interviews to learn more about:
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GI Director Tony Bovaird and Hannes Wezel, Community Engagement Director of Nuertingen Council in Germany, ran a workshop on "Good Practices in Community Engagement - Lessons from Europe". The enthusiam and frankness of Hannes' presentation spoke for itself - the workshop participants were 'thrilled' (as one of them reported, in the hugely enthusiastic feedback given by the participants). Some of the conference participants were inspired to join the subsequent GI study trip to Nuertingen, and confirmed that the UK has a lot to learn from the 'Mecca of community engagement' in Europe. You can get a taste of what Nuertingen is about by looking at Hannes' presentation (
t it will no longer
be enough in the future to focus simply on improving the quality
of services in EU countries - it will be essential to demonstrate
how these services impact on the quality of life of residents
and that the ways in which public agencies work together (the
'principles of public governance') are also being tackled successfully.|
Governance International |