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Quango or qango is an acronym (variously spelt out as QUAsi Non-Governmental Organization, QUasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organization, and QUasi-Autonomous National Government Organization) used notably in the United Kingdom but also in Australia, Ireland and elsewhere to label colloquially an organization to which government has devolved power. Lack of clarity over its meaning may have contributed to a decline somewhat in its use. The acronym can carry with it an implication of poor management and lack of accountability.

History of the term

The term has its origin in a humorous shortening of quasi-NGO, an ostensibly non-governmental organization performing governmental functions, often in receipt of funding or other support from government. ¹ In the territories named numerous such bodies appeared from the 1980s onwards. Examples in the United Kingdom include those engaged in the regulation of various commercial and service sectors, such as the Press Complaints Commission and the Water Services Regulation Authority, OFWAT.

An essential feature of a quango in the original definition was that it should not be a formal part of the State structure. The appeal of the term would appear to have been such that it was then extended to apply to a range of organizations, such as executive agencies providing (from 1988) health, education and other services. Particularly in the UK, this occurred in a polemical atmosphere in which it was alleged that proliferation of such bodies was undesirable and should be reversed (see below). ² This spawned the related acronym qualgo, a 'quasi-autonomous local government organization'. ³

In an attempt to avoid the pejorative associations of the term, quango has been abandoned almost entirely from UK official usage. Instead, the less contentious term non-departmental public body (NDPB) is employed to identify numerous organizations with devolved governmental responsibilities. The UK government's definition in 1997 of a non-departmental public body or quango was:

"A body which has a role in the processes of national government, but is not a government department or part of one, and which accordingly operates to a greater or lesser extent at arm's length from Ministers." [2]

United Kingdom

The use in the UK of executive agencies charged with service delivery functions has arisen alongside so-called non-departmental public bodies. These agencies do not usually have a legal identity separate from that of their parent department; and, unless they have trading fund status, their accounts form part of the accounts of the parent department. The National Health Service also has bodies called special health authorities, technically neither NDPBs nor executive agencies. The Department of Health chooses to designate all three types as "arm's length bodies".

Network Rail, responsible for the UK's railway infrastructure, may be regarded as a quango, subject, however, to the question of whether the entity is, as its formal structure might suggest, a non-governmental private company, or a state-owned enterprise.

Republic of Ireland

The Republic of Ireland in 2006 had more than 800 quangos, 482 at national and 350 at local level, with a total of 5,784 individual appointees and a combined annual budget of €13 billion. ⁴

Criticisms

Quangos have often been accused of bureaucratic waste and excess. In 2005 Dan Lewis, author of The Essential Guide to Quangos, for example, claimed that the UK had 529 quangos, many of which were useless and duplicated the work of others. In August 2008 a report by the right-wing pressure group, the Taxpayers' Alliance, claimed that £15 billion was being wasted by the regional development agencies, quangos set up to encourage economic development in the English regions. ⁵

See also

• Executive Agency
• Departments of the United Kingdom Government
• Scottish public bodies
• Off-budget enterprise
• Non-governmental organization

References

External links

• Cabinet Office - Agencies and Public Bodies
• Economic Research Council - online database of all UK quangos 1998-2006
• The Sunday Times Article on Quangos - Sept 2006
• Richard Allen and Dimitar Radev, "Managing and Controlling Extrabudgetary Funds", OECD Journal of Budgeting, Vol. 6, No. 4, 2006
• Carsten Greve, Matthew Flinders, Sandra Van Thiel (1999), Quangos—What's in a Name? Defining Quangos from a Comparative Perspective, Governance 12 (2), 129–146 doi:10.1111/0952-1895.951999095
• Definition of 'non-departmental public body' as synonymous with 'QUANGO'
• UK government site about the process of making public appointments

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• This page was last modified on 19 November 2008, at 11:49.

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