Quality assurance in Public Administration

The subject and practice of quality assurance in public administration is vital to the success desired by the administrator. Quality assurance is a way of measuring the usefulness of a manufactured products or rendered services to the consumers evaluating the degree of relevancy to customers use of the purchase in term of values and timeliness. Ensuring quality delivery is a process requiring guiding steps to assist in the realization of the customers expected goal(s). The whole process begins with evaluating the need of the target market considering the diversity and uniqueness of the environment or socio-economic landscape, this continues with fashioning out a design, developing such design into a product andor service. Many authors have described various tools useful in evaluating quality assurance in administrative and other settings where human resources are of importance (Shannon, 2003).

According to Dr. W. Edwards Deming, a PDCA model is employed by Shewhart Cycle which connotes Plan, Do, Check and Act. Plan involves establishment of aims, objectives and the task requires towards ensuring the expected results. Do emphasizes the need for implementation in timely manner, of the planned process. It is not just enough to plan and implement, practicality of a plan has been said to deviate by some degree when juxtapose the two, hence the need to check for coherence and evaluation of the implemented design. This is done my running a hypothetical or empirical testing at a relative costs reduction. To Act requires corrective initiative based on the outcome of checking model. This provides improves and better satisfaction of the outcome or result (Shannon, 2003).

Furthermore, the efficacy of PDCA model in quality assurance lies in its usefulness to analyze existing services and methods of producing same. With the analysis, an organization works out an easiest means in order to command customers trust and confidence in the service obtained. The essence of quality assurance is to uplift excellence in every component of the process leading to service delivery. A conscious effort at embracing quality assurance further engineers the application of the best resource in order to meet the condition and timeliness of output. While the output of service to be received at customers end is adjudged excellence through employment of expertise steps, quality assurance equally improves on the efficiency of staff and conservatively maximizes organizations internal costs and returns (Shannon, 2003).

Project quality management methodology

What is methodology in quality assurance This is the process used in evaluation of structural methodsprocess, responsibilities, scope, schedule, milestone and future plans to validate a set of requirements. Quality assurance is an integral component of project quality management as pictured in the above schematic representation. To ensure that project satisfies the needs for which it was undertaken, project quality management sees to
Management and human resource functions that determine the quality policy
Quality objectivity towards goal realization
Responsiveness and responsibility assurance of workers
Policy implementations by means of such approaches including quality planning, quality control, quality assurance and quality improvement within the quality system.

Management and human resource in quality assurance
The quality of management personnel is a true reflection of the quality of project. The structures rank from project manager to technical officer. The project manager or chief executive officer, as the case may be, takes the leadership role in being the administrative member of staff that must see to guarantee effective coordination of other members for project success. The project success is in line with the customers expected end-product. The manager ensures completion of project with high quality in a timely manner. He equally ensures consistency of process with the organization cultures and values. Usually, experienced personnel are important in taking up this responsibility. Project coordinator documents and communicates the project details. He relays feedback to the clients to facilitate their overall involvement in designing the project, briefing of information, success monitoring, and performs every other assignments requiring administrative representation. With the crucial roles played by project coordinator, effective communication skill in clients best language or accepted official language is important, this shall be discussed later. The coordinator serves the role of customers specification promoter. The manager appoints designator to project this could be in form of a committee to be lead by project coordinator. Emphasis on leadership management and proper designation of roles help bring orderliness, success factor identification and easy identification of factors delaying progress. Management of human resource in project quality assurance and control is essential in a focused mission to earning the warmth of customer satisfaction in the overall outcome of service delivery. It is of great importance therefore, to establish seasonal administrative training in order to constantly maintain quality standard in all services (Kloppenburg et al., 2002).

Quality Planning
Without quality planning, awareness on quality assurance would be a mere mirage. Planning begins with accurate and detail development of scope, schedules and budgets. A detail planning must see to the need of every unit in the organization, this is the whole essence of administration. The planning includes ensuring adequate provisions for the followings Quality Management Plan, Cost Management Plan, Organization and Management Plan, Communications and Project Reporting Plan, Risk Management Plan, and Procurement plan

Quality Control
This is a vital aspect of an excellent project management in a standard organization with high level of credibility. The use of quality control in administration is not unconnected with the need to review acceptability of deliverable services. It entails controlling of processes of executing the plans earlier mentioned. Quality control assures the following in its consideration

Project reviews and approval of deliverables to meet project schedule and Quality Management Plan
Cost control based on the Cost Management Plan including budgets, actual, projections, and obligations.

Schedule Control  tracking progress
Risk control and mitigation actively managed.
Issue and action management with issue resolution plans and action plan tracking and,
Change control and tracking of all changes and change approvals.
Quality Assurance methodology

Before highlighting methodology employed in quality assurance, it is important to view quality assurance in project management as an independent evaluation of administrative projects performance in order to provide confidence that the project will achieve its expected result with quality and optimal outfit. A methodology is derived to drive the project design towards a fulfilling completion. Quality assurance methodology is designed to address project concerns and such other issues that arise within the normal PRB review process  either in the phased funding releases, during monthly monitoring, or through project briefings to the PRB. The followings are pathway to quality assurance review
Quality Assurance Completeness

The Quality Assurance Completeness verifies that the project deliverables are complete and have been reviewed and approved by the appropriate people, demonstrating the degree project management methods, process and documentation are in place.

Fatal Flaw Analysis
The Fatal Flaw Analysis is designed to identify any flaws that might be causing the project problems, and identify recommended corrections

Stages in Quality Assurance Methodology
As part of the need for effective achievement of quality processing and finishing in public administration and projection management, various stages have been identified viz. project leadership stage, proposal stage, contract stage, planning stage and execution stage. Proposal stage involves working in close relation with the consumer in highlighting the project scope. This informs managers role in formulating detail or design of the work. Effort to be invested in the project is categorized into complex, medium and simple. Consumers would equally be hinted on role to play following due consultation and counseling on the project.

In the proposal stage, the responsibility of the vendor and the customer is defined information and material exchange is done, subsequently, reviews and approval is taken. After designation of responsibility, decision on post implementation support is carried out. This deals with scope of work covered by support, the required response time, and the cost implication. In the contract stage, client and administration agrees on criteria and procedures. For wholeness of contract stage, convention may call for necessary change. As such, a change control process is defined to ensure alignment with the expected quality despite wave of events emerging in the process of carrying out the project (Kloppenburg et al., 2002).

In the planning stage, project managing entails keeping a schedule where administrative progress can be readily monitored. In assuring quality, planning seeks to ensure the consideration of several milestones with clear outline through the project. This contributes significantly in identifying neglected specific data from customer and thus, reducing the potential risk by planning a counter mitigation step accordingly. The planning will include project manager identification. This serves a point of contact to consumer for progress report and quality assuring rapport. Conversely, a representative from the customers end is identified and schedule for point of contact by the project manager for exchange of information as per the progress status. Another stage is that of execution stage. Having understood the clients requirements perfectly, the administrator interprets the raw assignment to technical language and later invites the clients for confirmation. Communication and quality assurance
In institution of any organization aimed at satisfying the demand of customers, effective communicational skill cannot be negotiated for less. The use of communication begins with the interaction with the customer on the speciation of the projected outcome of a product. Quality assurance employs effective communication in assuring confidence in customer for perfect understanding of requirements. As such organizations with multi-lingual staff stand a better chance on globalization drive than others. A company with staff or interpreter who speaks customers language perfectly has been discovered to create an extra level of trust and improve quality of project management. A company with excellent records of project management needs to communicate and market itself professionally speaking the technical language of the project with sense of competence requires skills. Lack of communicational skills stand the risk of deflating customers expected value for costs. Imagine a supports after job comment lamenting missing out what the client perceived as the most essential part of the outcome following inadequate understanding of agreed position. Usually, this results from communicational lapse in designing the project (Kloppenburg et al., 2002).

Excellent communication exchange between client and project manager in detail reduces the level of negative surprises. Negative surprises are dealt with when the project contractor invites the customer to communicate the associated risk and instituted mitigation factors along the line. Risk analysis to be reviewed by both parties includes schedule risk, technology risk, and resource risk. Moreover, both parties communicate probable outcome when client fails on her part to supply some detail promptly when needed. As project assignment continues, there every tendency that new risk crops up due to government policy or other unforeseen circumstances, a preliminary communication on conditions surrounding agreed design relieves customers waving in her level of confidence in the companys competence. Communication brings a huge sense of transparency especially when the progress report can be easily access by the client through internet means.

Documentation and quality assurance
A documented project design includes detail, this is very important from the start of such project to its completion. The written design must be constantly review for assessment of performance per time. It is periodically gauged to detect any degree of inconsistency with the project plan for prompt correction and alignment before irreparable project damage. Documentation of any project should have a standard template that must be referred to in recurrent exercise. The importance of this is to quickly identify any plan or design lacking in usual detail. Identifying this will avert pending halt in progress or poor quality by taking appropriate steps to gather a satisfactory project detail. Another essence of ensuring documentation in project management lies in the use as a libel when the company is in future need of evidence for any legal action. A good record keeping firm is a good project manager who can defend quality of products anywhere in the world. Proper documentation also emphasizes inclusion of realistic schedules and avoidance of optimistic expectations. Unrealistic objective without a convincing approach infuriates customer because such act lacks demonstrable level of competence and expertise the client is going to pay for. Constant review of proper documentation on a project can easily help in pointing out unrealistic plan(s). Documentation also assures quality performance when embraced since it shall be a working manual guiding the whole process of administering execution of project. Should there be an incidence where it is important the company to change personnel for unavoidable reason (such as death of earlier task delegate), the documented manual on the project remains the most reliable information to assist the successor in carrying out the task to completion. As such, documentation needs to also include progress report per time and the percent achievement. The percent achievement helps in relaying summary report to the client objectively. In lieu of vital roles documentation plays in the practice of quality assurance and good project management, experts ranks it one of the top five sine qua non for a successful project accomplishment.

Conclusions
This subject is an eye-opener to whole manufacturing process a project must undergo in order to satisfy customers expectation. At the instance of competent managing personnel and through management policy regulation with institution of adhering measures using reward and corrective systems, quality assurance is achievable even against all odds. Conscious measures at practicing quality control, quality planning and quality assurance systems in an organization drive in the sure standard of project quality management. While the organization maintains its enduring culture and values which is unique to the establishment, application of quality assurance project management balances customers expected end-product(s) with maximum obtainable satisfaction in the system. Achievement of quality output in complex services requirement characterized of a public administrative setting is therefore, a function degree to how effective project quality management is practiced.

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