What are quality standards?
According to The American Heritage Dictionary, a standard may be defined as “something, such as a practice or a product, that is widely recognized or employed, especially because of its excellence.” Likewise, quality is defined as “essential character; nature”. We do need to be sure that we do not confuse quality with “grade” or “excellence” (though I do encourage you to establish excellence as a goal). For purposes of this analysis, quality refers to a practice or service or product meeting the expectations of our customers. In other words, government services will be characterized by the essential characteristics that are expected. This may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Combining these two, we can arrive at an understanding of quality standards as being those widely recognized practices that produce services and products that contain the essential characteristics expected of them. As we have defined the term, quality standards implies that there are some widely recognized p
