Municipal
Service
Quality
Assessment
Toolkit
Municipal Service Quality Assessment Toolkit (MUSQAT) is an universal instrument designed and tailored to the local self-governance development context in Georgia. It represents a simple tool for municipalities to diagnose the quality of municipal services and identify ways to improve the minimum required standards, documents and procedures for ensuring quality of municipal services. At the same time, the instrument facilitates basic economic, social and environmental data processing and analysis, which is vital for planning, monitoring and evaluation at strategic and operational levels.
For the purpose of the toolkit, municipal service quality is defined as the presence of strategic planning documentations, operational processes and procedures in various spheres and access to municipal services, which in turn implies the service coverage of the area or population in a municipality. The toolkit is not intended for evaluating the content of strategic documents, processes and procedures.
MUSQAT highlights its goal and process description, a methodology for self-assessment, an assessment matrix covering 27 criteria and 100 indicators under 4 thematic areas (Annex 1), a sample of self-assessment report (Annex 2) and template of an improvement plan (Annex 3).
While working on the toolkit, the CTC’s team of experts studied a range of benchmarks and standard setting instruments with regard to municipal services including ISO standards for municipal service assessment, Common Assessment Framework (CAF) for improved self-assessment of public sector performance, analyzed minimal standard requirements for municipal service delivery embedded in the Georgian legislation. Held series of consultations and meetings with specialists of various fields (environmental and social protection, public healthcare), as well as with the representatives of municipalities, field experts working for local and international non-governmental organizations and the National Association of Local Authorities of Georgia (NALAG).
The first edition of the toolkit was published in 2019 and piloted in 16 Georgian municipalities. With the support of the European Union, based on the results and findings of the practice run, the toolkit was revised and edited in 2020 together with the experts from the Austrian organization: “KDZ-Centre for Public Administration Research”.
