Total Quality Management (TQM)

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a new addition to the Drakenstein Municipality and is focusing on to create an organisational culture that will promote continuous improvement in everything by every employee/ councillor and services provider at all times, and requires changes in organisational processes, strategic priorities, individual beliefs, attitudes and behaviours.

Local Government has a unique opportunity in the service delivery chain to maintain citizens’ confidence in government. Therefore, creating sustainable communities, which are driven by quality, cost effectiveness and consistent public service, total quality management is the most integrated tool to assist the municipality in achieving its strategic objectives.

Drakenstein Municipality, to complement existing service delivery initiatives, will implement the International Organisation of Standardisation (ISO) 9001:2000 for local government. This is a certification process through the South African Burueau of Standards (SABS), whereby the municipality’s management system will be assessed. Once this process is completed and the municipality complied with all the requirements of the ISO 9001: 2000 for local government, SABS will then certify that the municipality has documented and implemented a quality management system, under management control to ensure that services to its clients are of consistent quality.

This is voluntary programme that the municipality will subscribe too and is testament of the municipality’s commitment to improved service delivery outputs to it community members.  This is also a process to ensure that every employee, councillor and service provider is held accountable for poor quality and inconsistency in service delivery.

One of the great challenges that societies face today is the need to develop and maintain citizens’ confidence in their governments and their institutions. In this respect, local governments have an important role to play in creating sustainable local communities in which quality, cost effective and consistent public services help to promote sustainable economic prosperity and social justice at the local level, by deploying and interacting with national and regional policies in a consistent and compatible way. In extreme cases, local governments can provide stability and promote governability and governance when these are lacking at the regional or national level. In this way, it should be possible to build stronger regional, national and global governments working from the local level. By securing a high quality performance of the municipal government, public policies coming from other government levels can be corrected and improved, allowing the whole system to become stronger. This type of coherent approach will help build reliable and consistent governments, at the local, regional and national level.

Although the needs and expectations of local citizens can vary significantly in different parts of the world, local governments worldwide are experiencing higher levels of democracy and pluralism, which require them to increase their ability to carry out their mandates in an effective and transparent way. This in turn requires sound management of the different resources and processes available to local government in order for these to work together coherently and effectively as a system.

A quality management system is the way in which a local government can direct and control its activities, in order to satisfy the needs and expectations of the local community. Broadly, it consists of the organizational structure together with planning, processes, resources and documentation that are needed to achieve the quality objectives, and to provide continual improvement of the products and services that are being provided. ISO 9001:2000 “Quality management systems – Requirements” has gained widespread acceptance as a basis for the development of such a system. Its effective implementation provides an excellent tool for local governments to be able to provide confidence to local citizens that their needs and expectations are fully understood and are capable of being met on a consistent basis and in a timely manner   

The current key documents from the ISO 9000 family of standards consist of:

• ISO 9000:2000 (“Quality management systems – Fundamentals and Vocabulary”), which sets out the concepts, principles, fundamentals and vocabulary for quality management systems in general,
• ISO 9001:2000 (“Quality management systems – Requirements”), which sets out the requirements for a system to be able to consistently meet the needs and expectations of customers (who in this case are the local citizens),
• ISO9004:2000 (“Quality management systems – Guidelines for performance improvements”), - which provides guidance of an organization overall performance and efficiency.

This IWA 4 has been prepared in order to provide local governments worldwide with a consistent approach to quality management. It aims to “translate” the technical language of ISO 9001:2000 into language that is more user-friendly for people who are involved in local government. In doing so, the intent is to stimulate and facilitate the use of ISO 9001:2000 in local government. However, since the specific circumstances of local governments in different regions and cultures will necessarily be different, it is important to recognize that there is no single prescribed way of implementing a quality management system that is based on ISO 9001:2000. It is up to individual local governments to adapt the examples that are provided in this document for their own particular situation and circumstances.

Although some local government organizations may have implemented ISO 9001:2000 partially, for specific services, the objective of this IWA 4 is to promote the use of the standard on an integral basis throughout the whole range of services provided including any contingency requirements. The Annexes to this document provide some examples of the services and associated processes that local governments should strive to provide, and a simple methodology by which too assess their degree of effectiveness and maturity.

In order to achieve the objective of s reliable, responsive and transparent local government, it is not necessary to seek certification to ISO 9001:2000, although this might be encouraged by regional or national government initiatives. Nor should conformity to ISO 9001:2000 be regarded as a final objective in itself – once a local government has achieved a level that allows it to provide consistent, conforming services to the local community, it should look beyond conformance to performance, and consider the utilization of ISO 9004:2000 and/or other excellence models to improve its overall efficiency.