L Cappelli

Peer evaluation to develop benchmarking in the public sector

Purpose – The urgency to strengthen the effectiveness and efficiency of public administrations has led to the adoption in the public sector – in Italy as well as in other countries – of tools and models inspired by the total quality management (TQM) approach, such as the common assessment framework (CAF). A parallel need was felt within public structures to train people, the “peers”, who aside from being able to implement the self‐evaluation activities of their own administration, also needed to be equipped with the necessary skills to complete external evaluation activities, namely “peer evaluations”, with the ultimate aim of spreading quality management culture and best practices in the field through an approach based on benchmarking. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a survey designed to determine the training requirements that a “peer” should acquire in order to perform “evaluation” activities.Design/methodology/approach – The paper has strong empirical connotations and is essenti...

Testing a customer satisfaction model for online services

Purpose – The paper aims to illustrate the results of a testing activity of a general customer satisfaction management model designed for online services provided by public administrations.Design/methodology/approach – The results are part of a wider research project, aimed at the implementation of a customer satisfaction management model for online services, starting out from citizen evaluations concerning the quality of services provided by public administrations. The model presupposes that the aspects of the service on which citizens are called to express their perceptions refer to well‐identified phases of the supply process, in such a way as to facilitate improvement measures. The testing activity involved a pilot group of Italian public administrations.Findings – As a result of the testing activitys initial stage, some major issues can be identified that concern the need to properly focus the questionnaire design and simultaneously make use of different data analysis techniques in order to strength...