The Innovative Public Services Group (IPSG) was established in 1999 with representatives from all 15 EU Member States. The group has grown along with the enlargement of the Union and today all 25 Members States are represented in the group along with the European Commission, EU Candidate Countries and Norway. As permanent expert observers European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA), EFQM and the German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer have also been taking part in this work since the very beginning.
The focus of the IPSG is the quality improvement of public services. It aims at developing new tools and activities to support this goal in the Member States. Current IPSG products and activities include:
- the Quality Conferences for Public Administrations in the EU
- the Common Assessment Framework (CAF)
- facilitating self-assessments on the basis of CAF
- benchmarking by means of exchanging good practices.
IPSG is part of EPAN network steered by the Ministers and the Directors General of Public Administration. Other permanent working groups of the network are the e-Government Group and the Human Resource Management Group.