ABSTRACT
The Politics and Governance Desk has coined the term Total Quality Governance to describe governance of public sector organisations based on citizen-customer feedback. The revolutionary impact of Total Quality Management in improving quality in the manufacturing and service sectors can be adapted to the public sector. While customer-oriented processes in private enterprise have already been discussed in the literature on the management of government, it has yet to permeate the practice of governments. The majority of people have historically been accustomed to the poor performance of governments and have not developed a culture of complaint for better service. Government agencies do not lose money when they perform poorly, they have no competition for their services, and the electoral rules of the country still feature fixed terms and regular elections. The public sector – government agencies and other not-for-profit public organisations – can learn a lot from innovations in service delivery in the private sector.
