ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how collaboration affects the drive to provide quality service and, in turn, the implications for evaluation. Before discussing these collaborative issues, however, it provides some background on the main ideas behind public service quality as part of public service reforms. The public service quality is developed and implemented through a number of tools, in which evaluation plays or should play a significant role. However, before exploring this issue, first examines some general approaches to service quality; second, discusses some examples of collaborative service quality initiatives in Canada and Denmark; and third, look at the complexities resulting from the use of collaborative arrangements to deliver service. The planning and model building are parts of the front end evaluation assessment or evaluability assessment would be useful to sorting out the untested assumption of public service quality. Evaluation should do similarly in a public sector with a strong focus on service quality.
