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The Benchmarking Quality Circles for Local Public Services Application within the sphere of food safety

The goal of this project is to foster quality improvements in the municipal services provided in the area of food safety, by means of a performance assessment tool: the Food Safety Indicator Balanced Scorecard (QRISAM), promoted by the Service of Programming of the Area of ​​Human Resources, Finance and Internal Services  in cooperation with the Department of Human Services Public Health Service.

In the first edition of the circles, a series of indicators were identified that can be used to measure and compare the activities carried out by the participating municipalities in the area of food safety. Some of these indicators have changed over these 5 years of food safety circles, reflecting regulatory changes which invalidated some indicators, and also to improve the definition of other indicators.

For each municipality, this data gives the strengths and the opportunities for improvement that will be analysed at the on-site workshops. This work can lead to five types of action:

• Choose an improvement opportunity to carry out during the following year.
• Analyse a best practice carried out that may provide a model for other municipalities.
• Analyse evolution of the service.
• Cost-saving actions.
• Analysis of strengths.

Thus, in the CCISAM of 2011 and 2012, an improvement opportunity was worked on, in 2013 best practices were analysed and in 2014, the analysis of strengths has been worked on.

All of this work is presented each year at a year-end workshop at which the results are given.

From the Public Health Service, we would like to highlight the value of these workshops as a forum for sharing organizational aspects of the services, work methodologies, for reflecting on training, on inspections and the various services that each participant provides in its territory.  

You can find out more at the Circles general website.