Quango
A quango or QUANGO (less often QuANGO or QANGO) is an organisation to which a government has devolved 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.[1]
For other uses, see Quango (disambiguation).
As its original name suggests, a quango is a hybrid form of organization, with elements of both NGOs and public sector bodies. The term is most often applied in the United Kingdom and, to a lesser degree, other countries in the core and middle Anglosphere.
In the UK, the term quango covers different "arm's-length" government bodies, including "non-departmental public bodies" (NDPBs), non-ministerial government departments, and executive agencies.[2]
In its pejorative use, it has been widely applied to public bodies of various kinds, and a variety of backronyms have been used to make the term consistent with this expanded use. The most popular has been "Quasi-autonomous national government organization", often with the acronym modified to "qango" or "QANGO".
Criticisms[edit]
The Times has accused quangos of bureaucratic waste and excess.[23] 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 faulted a majority of "quangocrats" for not making declarations of political activity.[24]