Executive agency

Agencies[1] include well-known organisations such as His Majesty's Prison Service and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. The annual budget for each agency, allocated by HM Treasury, ranges from a few million pounds for the smallest agencies to £700m for the Court Service. Virtually all government departments have at least one agency.

The initial success or otherwise of executive agencies was examined in the Sir Angus Fraser's Fraser Report of 1991. Its main goal was to identify what good practices had emerged from the new model and spread them to other agencies and departments. The report also recommended further powers be devolved from ministers to chief executives.

A series of reports and white papers examining governmental delivery were published throughout the 1990s, under both Conservative and Labour governments. During these the agency model became the standard model for delivering public services in the United Kingdom. By 1997, 76% of civil servants were employed by an agency. The new Labour government in its first such report – the 1998 Next Steps Report – endorsed the model introduced by its predecessor. A later review (in 2002, linked below) made two central conclusions (their emphasis):

"The agency model has been a success. Since 1988 agencies have transformed the landscape of government and the responsive and effectiveness of services delivered by Government."

Some agencies have, however, become disconnected from their departments ... The gulf between policy and delivery is considered by most to have widened."

The latter point is usually made more forcefully by critics of the government, describing agencies as "unaccountable quangos".

Several other countries have an executive agency model.

In the United States, the Clinton administration imported the model under the name "performance-based organizations."[3]

In Canada, executive agencies were adopted on a limited basis under the name "special operating agencies."[4] One example is the Translation Bureau under Public Services and Procurement Canada.

Executive agencies were also established in Australia, Jamaica, Japan and Tanzania.

• Trading fund
• Agency of the European Union
• Government-owned corporation
• Departments of the United Kingdom Government
• Non-departmental public body
• Independent agencies of the United States government
• United States federal executive departments

• Economic Research Council online database of all UK Quangos 1998-2006, archived in 2007
• 2002 Government report into the agencies model entitled "Better Government Services – Executive agencies in the 21st century" published by The Prime Minister's Office of Public Services Reform. Contains a list of agencies. (PDF)
• Civil Service (archived in 2008)