A quango or QUANGO (less often QuANGO or QANGO) is an organisation to which a government has
devolved
Devolution is the statutory delegation of powers from the central government of a sovereign state to govern at a subnational level, such as a regional or local level. It is a form of administrative decentralization. Devolved territories h ...
power, but which is still partly controlled and/or financed by government bodies. The term was originally a shortening of "quasi-NGO", where NGO is the acronym for a
non-government organization
A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in ...
.
In its pejorative use, it has been widely applied to public bodies of various kinds, and a variety of
backronyms
A backronym is an acronym formed from an already existing word by expanding its letters into the words of a phrase. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology. The ...
have been used to make the term consistent with this expanded use. The most popular have been "Quasi-autonomous national government organization" and "Quasi-autonomous non-government organization", often with the acronym modified to "qango" or "QANGO".
As its original name suggests, a quango is a hybrid form of organization, with elements of both NGOs and
public sector
The public sector, also called the state sector, is the part of the economy composed of both public services and public enterprises. Public sectors include the public goods and governmental services such as the military, law enforcement, infra ...
bodies. The term is most often applied in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
and, to a lesser degree,
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
,
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
,
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
,
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
and other English-speaking countries.
In the UK, the term quango covers different "arm's-length" government bodies, including "
non-departmental public bodies
In the United Kingdom, non-departmental public body (NDPB) is a classification applied by the Cabinet Office, Treasury, the Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive to public sector organisations that have a role in the process of na ...
" (NDPBs),
non-ministerial government departments
Non-ministerial government departments (NMGDs) are a type of department of the United Kingdom government that deal with matters for which direct political oversight has been judged unnecessary or inappropriate. They are headed by senior civil se ...
, and
executive agencies
An executive agency is a part of a government department that is treated as managerially and budgetarily separate, to carry out some part of the executive functions of the United Kingdom government, Scottish Government, Welsh Government or Nor ...
.
Use
Canada
In Canada, quangos are referred to as '
Crown Corporations
A state-owned enterprise (SOE) is a Government, government entity which is established or nationalised by the ''national government'' or ''provincial government'' by an executive order or an act of legislation in order to earn Profit (econom ...
' or simply 'Crown corps'. As of May 2021 there were 45 Crown corps owned by the Canadian federal government, however many more are owned by each of the provincial governments. Notably electricity providers such as the ' Saskatchewan Power Corporation' a.k.a. SaskPower owned by the province of Saskatchewan and ' Manitoba Hydro-Electric Board' a.k.a. Manitoba Hydro owned by the province of
Manitoba
Manitoba ( ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population o ...
.
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan ( ; ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada, western Canada, bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and on t ...
is notable for the ubiquity of provincial crown corps with most styled with the prefix ''Sask''- followed by the primary service. The larger Saskatchewan Crown corps have their own Saskatchewan minister with all Saskatchewan Crown corps owned by the Crown Investment Corporation of Saskatchewan which in turn is owned by the provincial government. Some of the most notable Saskatchewan Crown corps are as follows:
*
SaskTel
Saskatchewan Telecommunications Holding Corporation, operating as SaskTel, is a Canadian crown-owned telecommunications firm based in the province of Saskatchewan. Owned by the provincial government, it provides wireline and wireless communicat ...
(Saskatchewan Telecommunications Holding Corporation) providing telecommunications. Notable for the last remaining government owned incumbent telephone provider in Canada.
*
SaskPower
Saskatchewan Power Corporation, operating as SaskPower, is the principal electric utility in Saskatchewan, Canada. Established in 1929 by the provincial government, it serves more than 538,000 customers and manages over $11.8 billion in assets. Sa ...
(Saskatchewan Power Corporation) providing electricity.
*
SaskEnergy
SaskEnergy Incorporated is a Crown corporation of the Saskatchewan government which delivers natural gas to 93% of the communities in the province. The company owns 70,000 kilometres of distribution pipelines, 15,000 kilometres of transmission pi ...
SaskWater
Saskatchewan Water Corporation, operating as SaskWater, is a Crown corporation owned by the Government of Saskatchewan and supplies water, wastewater and related services to municipalities, industries and farms. In turn, municipalities supply wa ...
(Saskatchewan Water Corporation) providing potable water and sewage services to certain communities.
Ireland
In 2006, there were 832 quangos in the Republic of Ireland – 482 at national and 350 at local level – with a total of 5,784 individual appointees and a combined annual budget of €13 billion.
The Irish majority party,
Fine Gael
Fine Gael (, ; English: "Family (or Tribe) of the Irish") is a liberal-conservative and Christian-democratic political party in Ireland. Fine Gael is currently the third-largest party in the Republic of Ireland in terms of members of Dáil ...
, had promised to eliminate 145 quangos should they be the governing party in the 2016 election. Since coming to power they have reduced the overall number of quangos by 17. This reduction also included agencies which the former government had already planned to remove.
New Zealand
In New Zealand, quangos are referred to as '
Crown Entities
A Crown entity (from the Commonwealth term ''Crown'') is an organisation that forms part of New Zealand's state sector established under the Crown Entities Act 2004, a unique umbrella governance and accountability statute. The Crown Entities Act ...
', with the shift occurring in the 1980s during a period of neoliberalisation of the state sector. In 1996, New Zealand there was an estimated 310 quangos, plus an addition 2690 that were school Board of Trustees (similar to the American model of boards of education). Other quangos from 1996 include: "...63 Crown Health Enterprises, 39 tertiary education institutions, 21 Business development boards and 9 Crown Research Institutes. But there were also 71 single crown entities with services ranging from regulatory (e.g. Accounting Standards Review Board, Takeovers Panel) to quasi-judicial (e.g. Police Complaints Authority, Race Relations Conciliator), to the arts (e.g. New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, NZ Film Commission), to social welfare (e.g. Housing Corporation of NZ) and to substantial enterprises (e.g. Auckland International Airport Ltd)."
By 2003, the number of quangos had increased to an estimated 400 (excluding Board of Trustees), with more than 3,000 people sitting on governance boards that were appointed by successive governments. This appointment of people to governance boards has been widely criticised by political parties and political commentators as a form of
cronyism
Cronyism is the spoils system practice of Impartiality, partiality in awarding jobs and other advantages to friends or trusted colleagues, especially in politics and between politicians and supportive organizations. For example, cronyism occurs ...
.
In 2010, there were 2,607 crown entities (including Board of Trustees) with annual expenditure of $32billion in 2009/2010.
United Kingdom
Despite a 1979 'commitment' from the Conservative party to curb the growth of non-departmental bodies, their numbers grew rapidly throughout that party's time in power during the 1980s. One UK example is the
Forestry Commission
The Forestry Commission is a non-ministerial government department responsible for the management of publicly owned forests and the regulation of both public and private forestry in England.
The Forestry Commission was previously also respon ...
, which is a non-ministerial government department responsible for forestry in
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
.
The Cabinet Office 2009 report on non-departmental public bodies found that there were 766 NDPBs sponsored by the UK government.
The number had been falling: there were 827 in 2007 and 790 in 2008. The number of NDPBs had fallen by over 10% since 1997. Staffing and expenditure of NDPBs had increased. They employed 111,000 people in 2009 and spent £46.5 billion, of which £38.4 billion was directly funded by the Government.
United States
Use of the term quango is less common in the United States although many US bodies, including
Government Sponsored Enterprises
A state-owned enterprise (SOE) is a government entity which is established or nationalised by the ''national government'' or ''provincial government'' by an executive order or an act of legislation in order to earn profit for the governmen ...
, operate in the same fashion. However,
Paul Krugman
Paul Robin Krugman ( ; born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, who is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for ''The New York Times''. In 2008, Krugman was th ...
has stated that the US
Federal Reserve
The Federal Reserve System (often shortened to the Federal Reserve, or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States of America. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a ...
is, effectively, "what the British call a quango... Its complex structure divides power between the federal government and the private banks that are its members, and in effect gives substantial autonomy to a governing board of long-term appointees."
Other U.S.-based organizations that fit the original definition of quangos include the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) is a private, nonprofit organization established in 1984 by the United States Congress. In September 2013, the United States House of Representatives, United States Senate, and the Pres ...
(NCMEC), the
Federal National Mortgage Association
The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), commonly known as Fannie Mae, is a United States government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) and, since 1968, a publicly traded company. Founded in 1938 during the Great Depression as part of the Ne ...
(Fannie Mae) and the
Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation
The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), commonly known as Freddie Mac, is a publicly traded, government-sponsored enterprise (GSE), headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia.federal agencies that might be classed as quangos.
Indonesia
Indonesian Ulema Council
Indonesian Ulema Council ( id, Majelis Ulama Indonesia, ar, مجلس العلماء الإندونيسي, abbreviated MUI) is Indonesia's top Islamic scholars body. MUI was founded in Jakarta on July 26, 1975 during the New Order era. The council ...
( id, Majelis Ulama Indonesia, ar, مجلس العلماء الإندونيسي) is considered as a quango for its status as an independent, mass organization-like public organization but supported and financed by the state while keeping its status as independent organization outside the Indonesian state organizational system in other side. As quango, MUI capable to release religious edicts (
fatwas
A fatwā ( ; ar, فتوى; plural ''fatāwā'' ) is a legal ruling on a point of Islamic law (''sharia'') given by a qualified '' Faqih'' (Islamic jurist) in response to a question posed by a private individual, judge or government. A jurist i ...
) comparable to the state laws and binding Indonesian Muslims population and capable to influence state policies, politics, and economy due to its status and prestige.
History
The term "quasi non-governmental organisation" was created in 1967 by Alan Pifer of the US-based Carnegie Foundation, in an essay on the independence and accountability of public-funded bodies that are incorporated in the private sector. This essay got the attention of David Howell, a Conservative M.P. in Britain, who then organized an Anglo-American project with Pifer, to examine the pros and cons of such enterprises. The lengthy term was shortened to the
acronym
An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
QUANGO (later lowercased quango) by a British participant to the joint project, Anthony Barker, during one of the conferences on the subject.
It describes an ostensibly non-governmental organisation performing governmental functions, often in receipt of funding or other support from government,Wettenhall, R 1981 'The quango phenomenon', Current Affairs Bulletin 57(10):14–22.] By contrast, traditional NGOs mostly get their donations or funds from the public and other organisations that support their cause.
An essential feature of a quango in the original definition was that it should not be a formal part of the state structure. The term was then extended to apply to a range of organisations, such as executive agency, executive agencies providing (from 1988) health, education and other services. Particularly in the UK, this occurred in a polemical atmosphere in which it was alleged that proliferation of such bodies was undesirable and should be reversed. In this context, the original acronym was often replaced by a
backronym
A backronym is an acronym formed from an already existing word by expanding its letters into the words of a phrase. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology. The ...
spelt out as "quasi-autonomous national government organisation, and often rendered as 'qango' This spawned the related acronym ''qualgo'', a 'quasi-autonomous ''local'' government organisation'.
The less contentious term
non-departmental public body
In the United Kingdom, non-departmental public body (NDPB) is a classification applied by the Cabinet Office, Treasury, the Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive to public sector organisations that have a role in the process of n ...
(NDPB) is often employed to identify numerous organisations with devolved governmental responsibilities. Examples in the United Kingdom include those engaged in the regulation of various commercial and service sectors, such as the
Water Services Regulation Authority
The Water Services Regulation Authority, or Ofwat, is the body responsible for economic regulation of the privatised water and sewerage industry in England and Wales. Ofwat's main statutory duties include protecting the interests of consumers, secu ...
.
The UK government's definition in 1997 of a non-departmental public body or quango was:
Criticisms
''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
'' has accused quangos of bureaucratic waste and excess. In 2005, Dan Lewis, author of ''The Essential Guide to Quangos'', claimed that the UK had 529 quangos, many of which were useless and duplicated the work of others.
The term has spawned the derivative quangocrat; the
Taxpayers' Alliance
The TaxPayers' Alliance (TPA) is a pressure group in the United Kingdom which was formed in 2004 to campaign for a low-tax society. The group had about 18,000 registered supporters as of 2008 and claimed to have 55,000 by September 2010. However ...
faulted a majority of "quangocrats" for not making declarations of political activity.
See also
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Penelope Lyttelton, Viscountess Cobham
Penelope Ann Lyttelton, Viscountess Cobham, (''née'' Cooper; born 2 January 1954), is a British businesswoman known for her involvement in a number of quangos (an acronym for quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations).
Personal life
...
– nicknamed the "Quango Queen"
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Departments of the United Kingdom Government
The Government of the United Kingdom is divided up into departments. These, according to the government, are responsible for putting government policy into practice. There are currently 23 ministerial departments, 20 non-ministerial departments ...
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Government-organized non-governmental organization A government-organized non-governmental organization (GONGO) is a non-governmental organization that was set up or sponsored by a government in order to further its political interests and mimic the civic groups and civil society at home, or promote ...
(GONGO)
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Government agency
A government or state agency, sometimes an appointed commission, is a permanent or semi-permanent organization in the machinery of government that is responsible for the oversight and administration of specific functions, such as an administrati ...
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Independent agency
A regulatory agency (regulatory body, regulator) or independent agency (independent regulatory agency) is a government authority that is responsible for exercising autonomous dominion over some area of human activity in a licensing and regulati ...
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Off-budget enterprise Off-budget enterprises (OBEs, or special districts) are a type of government in the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union. OBEs use public funds to further public (as in education) or private (as in economic revitalization) inte ...
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Scottish public bodies
Public bodies of the Scottish Government are organisations that are funded by the Scottish Government. They form a tightly meshed network of executive and advisory non-departmental public bodies ("quangoes"); tribunals; and nationalised industr ...
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Welsh Government sponsored body
A Welsh Government sponsored body (WGSB) ( cy, Corff (plural: Cyrff) a Noddir gan Lywodraeth Cymru, CNLC) is a non-departmental public body directly funded by the Welsh Government. Under the Government of Wales Act 1998 the bodies were sponsored ...
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Non-departmental public body
In the United Kingdom, non-departmental public body (NDPB) is a classification applied by the Cabinet Office, Treasury, the Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive to public sector organisations that have a role in the process of n ...