Public Sector Benchmarking Project

Public Sector Excellence Programme

The Programme

The Cabinet Office has been running a UK Public Sector Excellence Programme (formerly the Benchmarking Project) since 1996. Phase One was a pilot exercise, designed to determine whether the Business Excellence Model (BEM; now known as the EFQM Excellence Modelā) was applicable to the public sector and, if so, whether it was a useful tool for supporting performance improvement. Following the success of this phase it was decided to proceed with Phase Two which sought to extend the use of the BEM more widely across central government. For a more detailed history of these phases see our publication Towards Best Practice

The success of the project was such, and the level of interest from organisations interested in becoming involved was so great, that Phase Three was launched on 7 April 1998. Unlike the two previous one-year phases, Phase Three will run for at least three years and is open to organisations from across wider public sector. For the services provided as part of the Programme have a look at the Brochure of Services Available

The Programme aims to :

	bring the benefits of the Excellence Model to the notice of public bodies;
	encourage all parts of the UK public sector to conduct self-assessments against the Model;
	assess their current overall performance and the reasons for the level achieved;
	identify those areas of their internal operation where improvement will have the greatest impact on their ability to meet their targets;
	help them share best practice systematically with each other, with the private sector and with government bodies in other countries

It is intended to provide a means by which particular aspects of performance can be identified where a large proportion of agencies are under-achieving and where a central initiative may be appropriate in order to improve the general level of service provided. The Programme follows the Modernising Government White Paper themes of sharing good ideas, continuous improvement and raising the quality of public services.

The EFQM Excellence Modelā

The Model was developed by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) and 200 organisations across Europe. It is a framework which helps organisations to identify their strengths and the areas in which they need to improve. An organisation conducts a self-assessment against the Model and then develops a prioritised action plan to make those improvements. It is widely used and highly credible throughout the private sector. EFQM launched the improved version of the Model, the EFQM Excellence Modelā, on 21 April 1999. The Programme fully supports this new version and intends to continue to encourage its use throughout the UK public sector, suggesting organisations discontinue using the previous version when appropriate. The Model can be used as a framework to integrate other quality schemes (IIP, ISO 9000 and Charter Mark) into an organisations planning and processes.

In February 2000 PricewaterhouseCoopers was commissioned by the Cabinet Office to undertake an evaluation [rtf format 4000kb] of the Public Sector Excellence Programme (the ‘Programme’), an initiative then co-ordinated by the Effective Performance Division within the Cabinet Office. This report details the findings from the evaluation, draws out the key conclusions and sets out a series of recommendations informing Cabinet Office of the next steps it should consider to take the Programme forward

For further information on this topic take a look at Getting it together - A Guide to Quality Schemes and the delivery of Public Services