THE Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce (MIIC) are working to formalise a framework to improve service delivery across all agencies of the Government.

This collaboration forms part of the Service Excellence Programme, which was launched in July 2022 to implement the Service Excellence Policy.

The policy outlines the key principles and minimum standards for all government entities, as well as the mechanism by which service excellence will be institutionalised in all ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).

The goal is to create a culture of service excellence across the public sector that drives the delivery of services that meet and exceed citizens’ expectations.

Senior director of the Public Sector Modernisation Division (PSMD) in the Cabinet Office, Danielle Jones Cox, said that during the developmental stages of the policy and programme, it was found that the ISO [International Organisation for Standardisation] certification of all MDAs across the public sector would be critical.

She pointed out that “there are a few ministries, departments and agencies that have been ISO certified, and one of the critical things that we recognised in designing the service excellence policy and programme was the importance of ISO certification, particularly ISO 9001, which is what we are focused on working with”.

The senior director was addressing a Jamaica Information Service (JIS) think tank at the agency’s head office, recently.

The MIIC, meanwhile, has a mandate to ensure that all government entities are ISO certified.

“We are working on finalising our framework to collaborate, because the policy has mandated us to work with the MIIC…to roll out ISO 9001 to those entities that haven’t yet been certified,” Jones Cox said.

Additionally, she noted that once the framework is finalised, a memorandum of understanding will be put in place to cement the “commitment that we’re making to this process”.

She said that while the entities that have already received ISO certification are much further along in the service excellence process, there is still a mandate for them under the policy.

In this, there is a service delivery minimum standard, below which no entity should fall.

PSMD’s Managing Director Karlene McKenzie Spencer explained that “with the ISO certification, the policy identifies that as a part of our quality management component. So, certifying yourself will ensure that once you get certification, a quality management mechanism falls into place,” she said.

“This means that all entities now must be operating at an international standard, in terms of the quality of service that they are delivering, and that is key for us because we are building certain mechanisms that must enforce and sustain service delivery on that quality management part,” McKenzie Spencer added.