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Home > Guidance & Good Practice > Efficiency > Efficiency Toolkit > Systems and Operations > Processes

Processes

The processes section looks at what activities an organisation executes to achieve its objectives. Processes that may be reviewed can include strategic ones such as 'developing a corporate strategy' to specific, lower-level ones such as 'responding to customer enquiries'.

Overview assessment
The overview assessment questions help analyse how an organisation reviews its processes and where there may be opportunities to improve the quality or amount of resources (time and people) required for processes. A high performing organisation tends to have standardised processes that are consistently reviewed, work well together, and support key business objectives.

Detailed assessment
The NAO has developed materials to support a detailed assessment in this area. These materials cover four main areas: Process Mapping, Management, Learning/support, and End Customers. Please contact the NAO Efficiency Centre Team for further information and to discuss how these materials could be applied to your organisation.

Other sources include
'Visa Entry to the United Kingdom: The Entry Clearance Operation': looks at UK visas' performance in managing service delivery and control. The report uses process mapping to establish its findings.

 

'Improving the Speed and Quality of Asylum Decisions': examines arrangements for processing asylum applications, focusing on speed and the quality of initial decisions.

 

'Asylum Decisions Process Flow' (from above report): an example of a completed process flow.

 

'Process flow template': provides a PowerPoint template that can be used to map processes, including the key information to gather.

'Helping those in Financial Hardship: The Running of the Social Fund' looks at the efficiency of the running of the social fund including decision-making processes.

'Getting it right, putting it right - Improving decision-making and appeals in social security benefits': looks at how decisions are taken in cases of appeal.