Overview

The Alberta Recreation and Parks Association is committed to developing a Service Excellence Program (SEP) for assessing and developing a process that will help define, monitor, and recognize outstanding performance in community recreation, sport, fitness, active living, parks, environment, arts, culture, tourism, and community development.

The ARPA SEP and Organizational Development Framework will help local community-based organizations achieve the entire list of target statements, with particular priority and emphasis placed on:

• Practical tools to support constant improvement in the quality of recreation and parks services;
• Promoting commitment to implementing best practices; and
• Building community and partner stakeholder confidence in recreation and parks services.

Who is it for?

The Service Excellence Framework is primarily for local government recreation and parks departments and agencies. The needs of other types of organization have been considered secondarily to broaden the appeal of the program.

What does it involve?

SEP audit and assessment tool allow every participating agency or organization to rate themselves against best practice guidelines and qualitative or quantitative indicators.

How does it work?

• All organizations will be admitted into the Service Excellence Program if they assess their organizational core competency areas by completing an audit using the SEP and 5 Modules of the Framework and if they submit an Action Plan focused on improving performance in areas that require attention.
• The Service Excellence Advisory Team (SEAT) will facilitate ongoing feedback and testing of these principles, practice guidelines, and indicators by administering surveys with expert panels and through pilot testing of the SEP with communities.
• Continued membership in the program is based on annual submission of a report on the previous year’s progress with action plan, a revised assessment or review and an updated action plan for the upcoming year.
• Agencies and organizations that achieve high assessments will be recognized for their achievement(s) with ARPA and others and will be encouraged to share their (best) practices through an online learning resource.
• High achieving agencies or organizations, either across the board or in specific competency areas, will be encouraged to partner with or mentor others who need help developing or implementing their action plan.

The result is a network of learning organizations supporting one another in peer reviews and with the active notion towards pursuit of excellence.

When will it launch?

SEAT is presently recruiting individuals with expertise relevant to SEP’s five Modules (Programs, Facilities, Parks, Community Building, and Leadership and Management) to participate as panel members in critiquing and improving each Module’s content throughout early 2011.

SEP is scheduled to officially launch at ARPA’s Annual Conference in October 2011.