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GGD-93-22R 1 (1993-03-30)

handle is hein.gao/gaobackgv0001 and id is 1 raw text is: 


General Accounting Office
Washington, D.C. 20548

General Government Division


B-249779

March 30, 1993
The Honorable Carol M. Browner                 lDU
Environmental Protection Agency                 148874

Dear Ms. Browner:

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a management approach that
strives to achieve continuous improvement of quality through
organizationwide efforts based on facts and data. TQM also
focuses business processes on meeting the needs of customers,
both internal and external. Although TQM traditionally has
been associated with private sector organizations and their
efforts to remain competitive and profitable, in recent years
federal organizations have been attempting to implement TQM to
cope with budget restrictions and better serve the public.

We recently surveyed federal installations to determine the
extent of their use of TQM and learned that 68 percent of the
installations surveyed were implementing TQM.1 An
installation, as defined by the Office of Personnel
Management, is a unit with a specifically designated head who
is not subject to on-site supervision by a higher level
installation head and who has been delegated some degree of
authority in the performance of personnel management
functions. Our survey covered over 2,800 installations, such
as Internal Revenue Service Centers, Social Security offices,
military depots, and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
research laboratories. Twenty EPA installations were included
in this survey, and the purpose of this correspondence is to
provide you a brief summary of the results as they apply to
EPA as well as to compare EPA results with the total results
of all surveyed federal installations. We believe this
information--particularly data on barriers to TQM--can be
useful in your planning and as a baseline for judging future
efforts.


'Ouality Management: Survey of Federal Organizations
(GAO/GGD-93-9BR, Oct. 1, 1992).
                            GAO/GGD-93-22R, TQM Implementation at EPA

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