Quality Standards in the Public Sector: Differences Between Italy and the UK in the Citizen’s Charter initiative
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9299.00224 |
| Published date | 01 September 2000 |
| Author | Luca Lo Schiavo |
| Date | 01 September 2000 |
QUALITY STANDARDS IN THE PUBLIC
SECTOR: DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ITALY AND
THE UK IN THE CITIZEN’S CHARTER
INITIATIVE
LUCA LO SCHIAVO
Service quality of public services is a major aim of the New Public Management
reforms occurring throughout Europe. The Citizen’s Charter initiative, launched by
the UK Prime Minister John Major in 1991, has been an example followed in some
European countries, including Italy (Carta dei servizi). This paper analyses and evalu-
ates the cultural differences in the usage of the concept of service quality standards
between the UK experience and the Italian one, referring particularly to two kinds of
public services, very different one from the other: healthcare and electricity supply.
The comparative policy analysis leads to a sketch of two different profiles in the
usage of quality standards in the public sector: a common law profile, where quality
standards are not legal rights but targets to be achieved and improved; and a public
law profile, where quality standards tend to be overlapped and confused with legal
rights of users. Under the latter framework, standards are likely to be sidestepped
because they are perceived more as a problem than as an opportunity to change.
1 INTRODUCTION
The word standard does not exist in the Italian language. Still, it is widely
used in its original form. For public services, the expression ‘quality stan-
dard’ – with the word standard generally written in italics – has reached
the most formal literature in Italy: the Gazzetta Ufficiale, i.e. the official bull-
etin of the laws. Now several laws and other normative acts refer to ‘quality
standards’. However, it seems that the original meaning of the word stan-
dard has not always been captured in the legislative texts: often the concept
of standard is confused in Italian with the concept of right. Instead of being
perceived as an objective to be fulfilled and even overcome, in Italy quality
standards are associated with legal obligations. You can seldom find state-
ments like ‘standards we aim to meet’ or ‘raising the standards’ in the
official governmental literature. Rather, the recently issued Italian law for
recognition of the consumers’ associations states that ‘the following are
recognized as fundamental rights of consumers and users: (. . .) delivery of
Luca Lo Schiavo is Quality Regulation Officer in the Italian Regulatory Authority for Electricity and
Gas; formerly Deputy Director of ‘Cento progetti al servizio dei cittadini’, a quality award pro-
gramme promoted by the Italian Department of Public Service. The views presented in this paper
are those of the author and in no way should be attributed to the institution for which he currently
works. E-mail: lloschiavo@autorita.energia.it
Public Administration Vol. 78 No. 3, 2000 (679–698)
Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street,
Malden, MA 02148, USA.
680 LUCA LO SCHIAVO
public services according to efficiency and quality standards’ (Law
n. 281/98, art. 1, para. 2).
Despite the linguistic difficulties, the concept of quality standards for public
services arrived in Italy thanks to the transposition process of the Citizen’s
Charter initiative from the British native environment. The corresponding
Italian initiative, the Carta dei servizi, holds more or less the same wording
but, as this paper tries to show, is very different for several reasons, includ-
ing the nature and meaning of quality standards, the actual results of the
programme and the change implementation process.
Why are such similar concepts and initiatives so different from one
another, under apparently similar names? How do the cultural and insti-
tutional differences between the two countries produce differences in how
quality standards are defined, implemented, monitored and evaluated? The
aim of this paper is two-fold: first, to compare the achievements of the
initiatives for quality improvement in the public sector in the two countries;
second, to understand whether the differences in the results can be
explained in terms of different cultural contexts in which an apparently
identical concept has been transposed.
In the following section, both the British and Italian initiatives are over-
viewed. Then, quality standards are analysed in their application in two
public services, healthcare and electricity supply, comparing Italy and the
UK (section 3). The comparison between the two initiatives is also carried
out on the basis of the different policy paths in the two countries (section
4). In the conclusions, two different patterns are identified, referring to the
different legal context of the two countries.
2 BACKGROUND
It is not possible to summarize in a few lines the initiatives of the Citizen’s
Charter in the United Kingdom and in Italy. The following paragraphs just
aim to provide the basic elements for the discussion developed below.
2.1 The citizen’s charter in the UK
The Citizen’s Charter initiative was launched by the UK Prime Minister
John Major in 1991, as a ten-year programme aiming at improving the qual-
ity of the services delivered by the public sector. The basic idea was to set
quality standards, measure performance against them, and raise the stan-
dards through the pressure that users can exert on the service providers,
as a result of openness, information on the standards and on actual quality
levels. The general framework of the Citizen’s Charter, published in a White
Paper in 1991 (Cabinet Office 1991), suggested that service providers should
have to ‘put things right when they go wrong’, for instance through effec-
tive complaints procedures or refunds where applicable.
Quality standards are the core of the Citizen’s Charter initiative. Not by
chance, in the first years the subtitle of the initiative was ‘Raising the stan-
dards’. Quality standards have been defined, sometimes at a national level,
Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000
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