About QMF

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The Quality Measurement Framework (QMF) project is part of the UK Centre for the Measurement of Government Activity (UKCeMGA) at the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The project is funded by the HM Treasury Invest to Save Budget (ISB). The ISB provides funding for projects which demonstrate the capacity to achieve long-term sustainability in at least one of the following three areas:

Making life easier for users: reducing the number of agencies which citizens have to deal with or increasing access to information held by several agencies
Making government more efficient: cutting out duplication and freeing up resources and influencing policy
Exploiting new technology: joining up IT systems and seizing the opportunities provided by the internet to improve service delivery

The project will use the findings of the 'Atkinson Review: Measurement of Government Output and Productivity for the National Accounts' (ONS, January 2005), which stated that "the output of the government sector should in principle be measured in a way that is adjusted for quality, taking account of the attributable incremental contribution of the service to the outcome" (Atkinson, p.42, par 4.24).

The QMF project will create mechanisms for more effective and efficient measurement and monitoring of third sector provision of public services, reducing the burden on the third sector while releasing cash through more efficient use of public funds to provide public services. The aim is to provide an effective tool that can be used by service commissioning authorities to make a reality of the policy intention.

The project will research four areas of public service delivery in detail: care homes; knowledge and information services for adult social care; low-level social care interventions; and pre-school education. In addition a major study into population preferences for social care outcomes will be undertaken and a scoping study of current and potential third sector involvement in the delivery of public services will be carried out. All other public services are potentially in scope for the project but will be investigated with a lower level of intensity. The key indicators for their prioritisation are the size of current or potential third sector involvement, the contractual agreements on the service delivery, and the likely data availability.

The purpose of this project is to develop effective but easily usable methodologies and procedures for measuring and assessing the value added of the relevant public services. They will constitute a tool for enabling service commissioning authorities to assess and monitor the performance of public services delivered by third sector organisations, in a way directly comparable with performance of public or private sector providers. This tool aims to reduce the administrative burden on service providers by concentrating on the essentials.

Note: The Office of the Third Sector defines the third sector as including non-governmental organisations which are value-driven and which principally reinvest their surpluses to further social, environmental or cultural objectives. It includes voluntary and community organisation, charities, social enterprises, co-operatives and mutuals. More information is available from the Cabinet Office.