Towards EFQM in IQA?

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Towards EFQM in IQA?

• Mirjam Woutersen, Nancy van San and Henri Ponds

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Preface

• NVAO since 1 February 2005, complete staff about
  35 fte (board, policy advisors and supporting
  staff)
• Programme accreditation in the Netherlands and
  Flanders, about 700 programmes every year
• Workload high, looking for a lean and effective
  system of IQA, partly based on EFQM
• Systematic approach IQA since spring 2006
• External review in 2007 with a positive result

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Scheme EFQM
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Why EFQM?

• Stimulates organisational learning and innovation
• Helps identification of stakeholders and staff
  needs and balancing those needs
• Identification of enablers of quality
• Identification intended results (stakeholders
  needs)
• Measurement of the performance and success

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Defined organisation processes in 2006
1. Leadership, Strategy Policy 1. Leadership, Strategy Policy A B C
Proces Manage- ment 2. en 3. (Initial) Accreditation
Proces Manage- ment 4. Legal Affairs
Proces Manage- ment 5. International Affairs
Proces Manage- ment 6. Additional Tasks
Proces Manage- ment 7. Communication
Proces Manage- ment 8. Support Services
Proces Manage- ment 9. Internal Quality Assurance
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Quality Areas
A B C
Staff Management 10. Human Resources
Resource- Management 11. General Services
Resource- Management 12. Finance
Resource- Management 13. ICT
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Intended Quality process

• (Initial) Accreditation and International affairs
  severe
• Other organisation processes less severe
• Strategic objectives and target figures
• Planning documents and reports of progress
• Evaluation activities

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Intended Quality process

• Yearly quality-report to the board
• Feedback from the board on proposals for measures
  for improvement
• This feedback should enable coherence between the
  organisation processes (systematic approach)

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Topics of a planning document

• Name organisation process
• Administrative information
• Strategic goals
• Targets for the next year
• Evaluation activities
• Accountability
• Proposed measures for improvement
• Documents

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What we learned up till now (2008)

• Dont produce a lot of paper and dont discuss
  very long about documents, otherwise resistance
  grows
• Quality improvement is a also a result of a
  immediate, spontaneous action
• Managing this IQA-system as an additional task
  for the board of a rather small organisation is
  complex

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What we learned - 2

• Due to high workload not all planned evaluations
  were carried out.
• Coherence between primary and secondary processes
  is not self evident

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Proposed measures for improvement

• Reduce the number of quality areas
• Choose e.g. two concrete quality targets in every
  process every year, not more
• Organise evaluation activities that give
  inspiration to the staff to work on quality
  (projects and meetings with stakeholders), rather
  than written evaluations
• Organise on a yearly basis a special day focussed
  on quality improvement for staff to create
  dialoque

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Discussion

• 1. Quality Agencies (QA) must perfome on IQA as
  HEI should (Practice what you preach!).
• 2. QA should evaluate all organisation processes
  and not only the key processes (systematic
  approach).
• 3. QA should make public the results of IQA.
• 4. Every staff member has a role in IQA.
• 5. IQA means primary working on a quality culture
  and not a formal, systematic approach.

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Discussion

• 6. Good procedure description by manuals is the
  basis of valid accreditation decisions.
  Evaluations are less important.
• 7. Full application of EFQM is a bridge too far
  for mostly rather small accreditation
  organisations.
• 8. Meetings or verbal consultation of
  stakeholders should be preferred above written
  evaluations.
• 9. Quality Agencies need a coordinator within the
  organisation for IQA.