The next two chapters examine how audit, inspection and evaluation have become central to the delivery of public services in the United Kingdom. This chapter is concerned with the perspective and work of government agencies concerned with quality assurance. Chapter Five looks at the effect on organisations like police forces, universities and hospitals that are subject to inspection, but also increasingly concerned with evaluating their own activities. In each case, there are already many histories of these administrative initiatives (for example, Pollitt, 1988, 1990; Walsh, 1991; Carter et al, 1992), and much technical discussion in the fields of public administration and management about the benefits of different regulatory models. This literature is informative, since the authors are often insiders who are working in management positions. They often go beyond reading policy documents, which can be obtained in great quantities from the websites of different agencies, through interviewing policy makers about their own views. Nevertheless, the focus is on constructing models, or evaluating the effectiveness of different management tools, rather than looking at the ‘messy realities’ (Stenson, 1998, p 350) of working life inside government agencies and departments.

From a sociological perspective, it seems important to examine the practical work involved both in developing policy, and putting it into practice (see Rock, 1994, 1995; Travers, 1999, ch 6). We can obtain a general understanding from an institutional history, or the consideration of ideal-typical management models, about how an organisation develops along with its objectives and achievements. However, one necessarily gets little sense of how managers and professionals get through their routine, day-to-day work, or how they encounter and solve problems in implementing or responding to some new government initiative. One also gets little sense of the culture of different organisations, or the personality of particular individuals, which is clearly vital in day-to-day work despite being treated as of no consequence in most academic disciplines outside the humanities.