Quality Management for Government: A Guide to Federal, State, and Local Implementation.

• Author: Gaskins, George C.

Everywhere you look today you see the word "quality." Not everyone understands the meaning of that word, although most people think they do. This book does a good job of helping the reader understand quality from the standpoint of a public manager.

The author begins by discussing the status of quality at all levels of government, and then he explains what it is by focusing on its key elements. His discussion of the big three gurus of quality (Deming, Juran and Crosby) is particularly useful to the novice, although additional reading will be required to fully understand their theories.

The book has ample examples of quality in practice at all levels of government. Hunt then shows how to assess an organization's quality in detail. Three chapters, describing how to improve, plan and implement quality, are sufficiently detailed to explain how this is done, but they are probably not detailed enough to enable readers to go out and implement quality themselves. Nevertheless, when readers combine these chapters with the examples given earlier, they do get an idea of what it means to implement quality. This reviewer's advice is to multiply that idea by at least two.

The last chapter contains a very handy summary review of some of the better known quality tools and techniques. While the novice in quality may not find the summary sufficiently detailed, the more experienced practitioner may find it a useful compilation to refer to as the need arises. As an organization's quality process continues, the occasions when quality tools and techniques are required increase dramatically. This book will be pulled out frequently when this happens.

While anyone interested in the subject of quality in government...