Benidorm collects CAF 500+ certification for the quality of the Treasury service and proposes to extend the system to other departments

The City Council has been the first local administration in Spain to achieve this distinction

Benidorm City Council collected on Tuesday the CAF 500+ quality certificate for the service provided by the Treasury area and obtained at the end of 2015 after exceeding with note the last audit, becoming the first local administration of Spain is to display this distinction.

The mayor, Toni Pérez, was responsible for collecting this award from Ana Ruiz Martínez, president of the State Agency for Evaluation of Public Policies and Quality of Services (AEVAL), an agency under the Ministry of Finance and Administration Public The event, held in the Hall of Acts of the City Council, have also attended the Councilor for Finance, Lourdes Caselles; The director of the Department of Quality of Services of AEVAL, Joaquín Ruiz; The chief evaluator of this department and national correspondent of CAF, Begoña Lázaro; Members of the corporation; The municipal treasurer, Antonio Cholbi; And workers in the Treasury and other departments.

Obtaining this certification CAF 500+ is associated with the work and service provided in the area of ​​Treasury, department that achieves a level of satisfaction among its users of 8.92 out of 10. In addition to improving the attention given to the citizen , The project has managed to improve performance.

After collecting this certification and congratulating the Treasury department and team, the mayor stressed that "our ultimate goal" as a public administration should be to "make the relationship between the citizen and his administration easier, more agile and more efficient." Pérez has emphasized that the CAF 500+ demonstrates the commitment to excellence of the City Council and has highlighted the fact that this recognition to user satisfaction has been achieved in services linked directly to the payment of taxes, fees and penalties .

For her part, the finance director recalled that the project to obtain the CAF 500+ began during the last legislature and added that the current local government wanted to "continue" that bet that has made the Treasury of Benidorm "a benchmark of national and international quality".

Caselles recalled that it is a system of "continuous improvement" and has advanced that this project is now intended to extend to other municipal areas. At the moment it is being studied which departments to extend it, although the chances are that it will be implanted in those that already have some quality certification. The director of AEVAL has stressed that "the strategic commitment of the City Council for quality" and "the involvement of employees and leaders" are "keys to success" that have allowed Benidorm to be "one of the first organizations to achieve this Level of certification ". He also congratulated Benidorm on representing Spain last November "as a case of good practice" at a CAF event held in Bratislava (Slovakia) - organized by the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA). During the ceremony of delivery of the CAF 500+, the team of the Treasury Department has also been recognized.

What is CAF 500+?

The CAF 500+, launched by the Ministry of Finance through AEVAL, aims to improve public organizations through self-assessment. It is the regular analysis, by the organizations themselves, of their processes and management results to identify the strengths and weaknesses and determine the appropriate improvement plans.

The Common Assessment Framework (CAF) is a total quality management tool, developed by and for the public sector and inspired by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Model of Excellence. The CAF is specially designed for the public sector since it includes aspects such as political leadership and citizens. It was designed for public organizations in Europe to start using Quality Management techniques to improve their performance. The CAF provides a simple and user-friendly model, appropriate for public sector organizations to carry out a self-assessment.

This distinction of quality is at European level and after its achievement should only be maintained every three years.

The study that reveals the excellent satisfaction results of the users of the Municipal Treasury has been carried out through three different tasks and complementary to each other. On the one hand, there have been general surveys of citizens requesting services from the Municipal Treasury and SUMA. Perceptual surveys have also been carried out on the application of procedures of the Municipal Treasury (direct management), which have recorded a higher score that reaches 9.30 and which refer to direct attention.

Finally, satisfaction surveys have been conducted to municipal suppliers by telephone.

97% are satisfied in the resolution of demands, the highest score is recorded in the personal treatment and the lowest score refers to the times elapsed in the terms, nevertheless with a score of 8.74, and the Commitments of the Charter of Services is around 8.5.