Standards Development

Scope

This document provides guidelines for assessment, measurement, and performance evaluation of the implementation of ‘ISO 11367:2025 - Service Excellence — Principles and Model for public organizations.’

It specifies a structured framework and methodologies for assessing organizational maturity, performance indicators, and evidence of conformance with the principles and elements of public service excellence in ISO 11367.

This standard covers the following, in line with ISO 11367:

- Defining measurable criteria

- Establishing Key Performance Indicators (KPI);

- Conducting evaluations including self-assessment and third party assessment;

- Managing feedback from citizens and stakeholders

- Developing improvement plans based on the feedback, evaluations outcomes; and

- Reporting mechanisms for continuous improvement, transparency and benchmarking.

This document is applicable to all public sector organizations, regardless of size, type or level of hierarchy of the government or policy makers.

Purpose

Public Service Organizations operate on behalf of government or public authorities to deliver services that serve the public interest and welfare. These organizations have multiple functions to meet a wide range of the societal needs, including societal and regulatory governance, health, education, sanitation, transport, justice, safety, or community development.

With the increasing expectations and complexity of the service sector, public service organizations must become more proactive, transparent, and citizen-focused in order to deliver excellent and accountable services.

Public service organizations operate in dynamic and often complex environments that demand transparency, integrity, efficient resource utilization, citizen-centric decision-making, continuous improvement, and innovation in service delivery.

The purpose of the proposed standard is to provide the structured framework and practical guidance for assessing and measuring the level of measurement, and model of public service organization referred in ISO 11367:2025.

The proposed standard will address the:

• Assessment of public services performance

• Development and use of measurement indicators (KPIs)

• Guidance for self-assessment

• Guidance for the third-party assessment

• Guidance for benchmarking

• Framework for confirming sustained excellence in public services

Justification:

ISO TC 312 has published and is working towards developing a suite of standards on service excellence that includes the foundational standard ISO 23592 that lays down the principles and approaches for achieving service excellence in organization. The standard ISO/ TS 23686 specifies metrics and methods of measuring service excellence performance that includes the establishment of a measurement system, measuring service excellence leadership and strategy, measuring service excellence culture and employee engagement, measuring outstanding customer experiences and setting up the framework for operational service excellence performance. The Standard ISO 11367, Service Excellence — Principles and Model for Public Service Organizations was developed as a sector specific guideline to carry forward the service excellence approach enunciated through ISO 23592 to the public sector organizations, that play a critical role in society and impact citizens lives on a daily basis, but often lack the resources, flexibility and professional management typically available to commercial organization. ISO 11367 elaborates on the principles and management of service excellence with those that are additionally applicable to public services such as transparency, integrity, accountability, fairness and trust.

With a view to facilitating wider adoption of ISO 11367 by public sector organizations it is essential to supplement it with additional guidance through standards on implementation as well as measurement and assessment in an environment typical to public services that has been articulated in detail in ISO 11367.

This proposal is being made to develop a Technical Specification providing guidelines on the Assessment and measurement relating to ISO 11367:2025 implementation, which is considered essential to complete the full suite of guidance for achieving excellence in public services

The proposed measurement and assessment framework will enable public service organizations to identify strengths, gaps, and improvement priorities in their journey towards excellence.

Market relevance:

Governments as well as public service organizations across the world are increasingly focusing on improving service quality, transparency, and citizen experience as part of ongoing public sector reforms and digital transformation initiatives. However, there remains a gap in consistent, structured, and comparable approaches for assessing and measuring service excellence, particularly in the context of public service delivery across different administrative and institutional settings. The Guidelines on the Assessment and Measurement relating to ISO 11367:2025 implementation provide a adaptable framework to support public service organizations in systematically assessing, measuring, and improving service excellence, thereby addressing this gap. The guidance is relevant across diverse administrative and institutional contexts and supports the consistent application of service excellence principles, enabling benchmarking, performance improvement, and enhanced trust in public services at national and international levels.

The market relevance of assessment and measurement of public services is further confirmed by its use by local governments, public administrative offices as well as academic research institutions. Some examples are given below:

1. Many cities measure the performance of public services and rate and grade them as references for improvement.

For example, the city of San Francisco in USA measures services performance annually and publishes them in public domain:

https://www.sf.gov/resource--2024--san-francisco-performance-scorecards

https://www.sf.gov/data--city-survey-overall-government-services 

2. Federal governments use data of measurements and public perception to evaluate the state of services being delivered decide policy level improvements

For example, the office for National Statistics (UK) publishes detailed data on public service productivity and quality adjusted outputs for services like health, education, and social care. These datasets show how productivity changes over time when quality adjustments (e.g., outcomes and satisfaction) are considered, not just volume of services delivered.

Key Insight: This allows policymakers to assess whether services are becoming more efficient and effective over years.

https://uksa.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/publication/national-statisticians-independent-review-of-themeasurement- of-public-services-productivity/

3. Academic research using empirical and survey data on measurements of public service performance come up with useful insights that enable public service designers and providers to understand the effectiveness of the service improvement efforts.

For example, the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore conducted a study on the Public Value Creation through Private Partnership: Lessons from Public Service Delivery in Karnataka, India. The paper provides a realistic estimate of the effect of the public service digital centers established by the State of Karnataka, India and the short falls observed, leading to recommendations for improvement.

 https://www.iimb.ac.in/sites/default/files/2018-07/PPP_conference_paper_WP_315.pdf

Target users:

• Public service providers at national, regional, and local levels.

• Policy makers and public administration leaders.

• Public sector training institutions and consultants.

• Accreditation, certification, and assessment bodies.

Additionally, this new standard will make the necessary links with the other standards developed or in the process of developing such as:

- ISO 11367:2025 — Principles and model for public service organizations.

- ISO/TS 19390:2025 - Service excellence — Implementation approach for ISO 23592.

- ISO 23592:2021 — Service excellence — Principles and Model.

- ISO/ TS 23686:2022 - Service excellence — Measuring service excellence performance

- ISO/TR 7179:2023 - Service excellence — Practices for achieving service excellence

- Other relevant ISO standards and technical specifications as identified during drafting. ISO/ TC312/ WG4, decided that if this New Work Item Proposal is approved this new standard could be included as Part 2 on ISO 11367:2025.

Preparatory work and resources:

Preparatory work: Drafting will be led by ISO/TC 312/WG 4, with contributions from experts in public administration, service quality, citizen engagement, and members involved in ISO 11367:2025 development. Lessons learned from WG2’s ISO/TS 19390:2025 project will be referenced.

Resources: Sufficient expertise and resources are available. Member Bodies are expected to nominate additional experts, if necessary, with relevant public service experience. WG4 Members are from countries with a long tradition of public sector such as India, Japan, China, Germany, Cyprus and Finland.

This NWIP if approved will run in parallel with Guidelines on the implementation of ISO 11367:2025 -- Service Excellence -- Principles and model for public service organizations implementation, already proposed by Cyprus as a NWIP.