Development of FINEEC’s operations
FINEEC constantly develops its activities. The enhancement work is aimed at improving the customer-oriented approach and impact of FINEEC’s evaluations and other activities as well as its internal activities.
To support this enhancement work, FINEEC systematically gathers feedback on the evaluations it has conducted and requests feedback from its stakeholders. In addition, FINEEC participates in the external evaluation of its own activities.
The cycle of continuous improvement as the basis for FINEEC’s quality management
FINEEC is responsible for the quality of its activities and its continuous improvement. Quality management is an integral part of FINEEC’s management and steering of its activities. Quality management supports FINEEC’s strategy and the achievement of its strategic goals. The implementation of the strategy, activities and the achievement of goals are systematically evaluated. FINEEC’s activities are continuously developed and improved, utilising information obtained from evaluation and feedback systems.
FINEEC does not have a separate quality system or manual, but instead quality management is built into FINEEC’s steering of activities and the intranet, which brings together the key elements of quality management. The purpose is to maintain the agility of quality management in an organisation of the size of FINEEC. Another purpose is to make quality management a natural part of the daily activities of FINEEC’s staff.
The quality management is based on Deming’s cycle of continuous improvement – the so-called PDCA-cycle (Plan, Do, Study, Act). The idea of the model is a spiralling cycle of planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and development of activities. The goal is the continuous learning and improvement of the organisation. In addition to the areas based on the cycle of continuous improvement, the key elements of the quality management are external steering of activities, FINEEC’s strategy and management system.
The key elements of FINEEC’s quality management have been visualised in the cycle of continuous improvement. See below also the responsibilities of the quality management at FINEEC.
Text equivalent of the visualisation.
Collection of feedback on evaluations
FINEEC systematically collects feedback on all evaluations it has implemented. Feedback is collected from both the organisations evaluated and the evaluation teams.
The aim of collecting feedback is to:
- Ensure that FINEEC’s strategy and values are implemented in the evaluations.
- Provide information on how the evaluation processes work.
- Provide information on the strengths and development needs in FINEEC’s activities.
- Strengthen the customer-oriented approach in the evaluations.
- Improve the use of the evaluation data.
- Ensure that FINEEC successfully carries out its statutory duty.
Every year, FINEEC provides its stakeholders with a summary of the received feedback and the development measures based on it.
Stakeholder survey
FINEEC’s stakeholder survey is conducted every two years. The target group of the survey includes early childhood education and care providers, education and training providers, higher education institutions, representatives of educational administration, NGO’s, representatives of organisations involved in teaching and education, and representatives of working life.
The purpose of the survey is to investigate how different stakeholders find their cooperation with FINEEC and what kind of information they hope we would produce. In addition, the survey is used to find out how successfully FINEEC manages to cooperate and communicate with its stakeholders and what kind of reputation we have among the different stakeholders.
Read more about the results of the stakeholder surveys below (in Finnish).
Evaluation of FINEEC’s activities
FINEEC regularly participates in the external evaluation of its activities. In 2023, the Ministry of Education and Culture will implement an international evaluation of FINEEC.
The previous external reviews of FINEEC were conducted in 2020-2021 and 2016-2017 by ENQA (European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education). Although the ENQA reviews focused particularly on the compliance of FINEEC’s higher education evaluation activities with the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area, some parts of the review applied to the entire FINEEC organisation (e.g. the goals and objectives, official status, independence, internal quality assurance and resources of the organisation). FINEEC passed both reviews, its full membership in ENQA was reconfirmed and it renewed its listing in the register of trusted European quality assurance agencies (European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education, EQAR).