Stay updated on our activities

Back

CAF’s implementation in Municipality of Volos

Received Golden Case recognition at the CAF Users Event 2025 in Warsaw

CAF Best Practice
Date of publication: September 2025

Executive summary

The Municipality of Volos has implemented the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) in order to evaluate systematically its operational processes, administrative functions, and stakeholder perceptions. The assessment identified significant challenges, notably insufficient employee engagement and limited public participation. In response, the municipality established a dedicated quality team, implemented collaborative tools, and enhanced mechanisms for citizen involvement and employee participation.

Moreover, the innovative approach of integrating CAF with ISO 9001 has markedly refined the planning and execution of improvement initiatives, thereby fostering a robust culture of continuous quality enhancement. 

About the organisation

The Municipality of Volos is situated midway in the Greek mainland, in the Magnesia regional unit of Thessaly region. With a population of about 140.000 inhabitants, it is the capital and the administrative center of Magnesia. It consists of Volos city and some smaller suburban communities. Volos is a coastal city and one of the largest cities of Greece. The economy of the municipality is based on trade, services, tourism, agricultural production and manufacturing.

The Municipality of Volos is a local government authority governed by a municipal council and led by a mayor. It is responsible for the environmental and civil protection, commerce and tourism, licensing certain business enterprises, water and waste management, public housing and town planning, urban road system etc.

Urban environment upgrading, preservation of cultural heritage, social empowerment and enhancement of sustainable development are primary strategic goals. Being a citizen-centered organization, it has early recognized the importance of quality as a key factor in the management of a public organization and in providing quality and efficient services to citizens.

Quality improvement aspects

The Municipality of Volos has prioritized quality management since 2010 by adopting ISO 9001. Recognizing the benefits of total quality management, the organization also implemented CAF in 2018. The purpose was to gain insights into its operations and administrative functions, as well as to understand the general perception of employees, citizens and stakeholders regarding the municipality services. Both frameworks foster a continuous improvement culture by promoting systematic quality management and proactive benchmarking, which helps in the early identification and resolution of issues.

The focus on citizen needs, paired with a holistic evaluation of leadership and performance, drives improvements in service quality and stakeholder satisfaction.

One of the major issues regarding the organization’s internal environment was the low employee engagement and the totally lack of co-working tools. Another issue to be mentioned was the poor citizens’participation in local affairs and the limited involvement of civil society stakeholders in consultations organized by the municipality. To be more specific, the score in criteria seven “people results”, eight “social responsibility results” and in sub-criterion 6.2 “citizen / customer oriented results” was very low (20.09,26.10 and 11.11 respectively). We should note the lack of measurements until the CAF initiative.

Having in mind that a people-centric approach is a key factor for quality management as it is essential to identify people’s needs and design in an efficient way to provide maximum satisfaction, the following objectives were proposed:

  • to empower the employees
  • to improve the communication among the staff of the municipality
  • to reinforce the feeling of participation in the decision making of the organization
  • to increase community engagement and public participation in local affairs

Stakeholders and communication

Planning, Sustainable Development and New Technologies Directorate was responsible of the first self-assessment evaluation in Volos’ Municipality. Moreover, the General Manager Office of Volos Municipality was the project team leader who contributed towards the accomplishment of the initiative. The General Manager Office has always a coordinate role in this kind of projects as it ensures the commitment of the administration and staff and the completion of the projects.

The whole project was supported and managed by the Efficiency and Quality Department that belongs in the Planning Directorate. This administrative unit began to propound the idea of Common Assessment Framework which resulted in several innovative actions for the organization.

The CAF self-assessment tool was conducted in 2018 in six (6) units of Volos’ Municipality. An eleven-member team was established with the responsibility for the CAF’s implementation in a period of seven months. All the criteria were evaluated by the project’s team after it had collected and had checked all the supporting documentation.

Regarding the communication into the organization about CAF’s initiative, at the beginning, there was an ongoing formal and informal communication through business letters, reports, e-mails and brief meetings with managers and employees that were getting involved in the project. All these actions contributed to the dissemination of knowledge to all people involved. Consequently, during the implementation of the project, there was a continuously shared information about disseminating expertise, skills and other valuable lessons through training programs and internal digital tools such as our “digital library” for the necessary documentation. In addition, receiving

always a feedback of all the implemented steps was a good practice that kept everyone well informed and involved. The realized approach of sharing knowledge and continuous communication between team members was very important in the process of identifying problems and finding possible solutions in connection with the objectives fostering a collaborating environment. Another point worth mentioning is that team members took into consideration some useful information from the questionnaires delivered to municipal employees, citizens and other stakeholders about their opinions and needs.

Finally, it is very important that the project was designed in-house, with no external technical support, as all the activities and processes were carried out by the employees of the organization. This led the organization to gain expertise in designing and implementing CAF’s assessment tool based on its own experiences.

Implementation process/approach

Regarding the improvement of employee empowerment and the increase of public participation, the Common Assessment Framework combined with the Quality Management System were the basic quality tools used in our organization in order to achieve its objectives.

Although, it was the first self-assessment evaluation of our organization, most of the key CAF steps were followed. Initially, the deputy and the general manager committed to implementing the CAF self-assessment, after the proposal of Quality Department that held the main responsibility of the project. Planning the process, a self – assessment team was formed and an implementation plan was developed. For best self-evaluation, the members of the team came from different levels and different units: from the heads of internal units to the employees at the operational level. Most of them were chosen because of their previous knowledge in quality tools and operations management and stood out for their strong communication and critical thinking skills. All involved team members were well trained on the CAF model – it use and benefits, the nature and method of carrying out the self-assessment process, the timelines, etc. Also their particular role in the process of CAF implementation was clarified by the Quality Department and the coordinator – through letters, e-mails and brief workshops. Before conducting the self –assessment, the IT Department acting in cooperation with the Quality Department set up a “digital library”, a co-working and interactive tool enabling the collection of all the supporting information and documentation gathered by team members at one single point for each criterion. Only project team members could have access into this platform.

During the implementation of the project, the self-assessment was carried out in smaller sub-groups. Each sub-group was assigned to prepare each criterion, collect all the necessary documentation and evaluate each criterion. After that it had to present all the evidence and the rating for each criterion to the other project team members so as to come to a common consensus. The scoring of all criteria was adopted in 4 joint meetings. All the project team members were well informed of the consolidated/supporting documentation of each criterion through the “digital library” and could discuss in plenary no more than five minutes (5’) per question/example – for saving time. All members were able to explain or comment. The final assessment on each sub-criteria and the overall final assessment, was reached unanimously by consensus.

Another method that contributed to the project is that project team members conducted a questionnaire among employees in terms of determining the organizational climate and culture, values, knowledge of the mission and the strategy. A survey on the satisfaction of citizens and stakeholders with the municipality and its services was also conducted. The results contributed to making the score of the corresponding criteria. After the analysis and assessment of the CAFs’ criteria, the project team members recorded the strengths and weaknesses of the organization and made proposals for improvements measures and future actions based on their importance and feasibility.

The actions that have been proposed for the empowerment of our employees were:

  • Quality Team, of promoting a quality culture and mindset into the organization
  • Improvement Proposal Template, an immediate and simple way to propose some improvements
  • In-house training programs, focused mainly on project management and quality issues within the organization for the development and the improvement of employees’ skills and knowledge-relevant to their current role and responsibilities
  • Digital co-working platforms and tools, promoting cooperation and interactive work

Regarding community engagement and public participation, the proposed improvements were:

  • Stakeholder consultation (online surveys, opinion polls, questionnaires, public meetings)
  • a Digital Consultation Platform allowing individuals and organizations to contribute to the improvement of the municipality work promoting the participatory decision-making and the feedback by the citizens

All the project and activities were carried out with our own human resources without any external help or cost. The self-assessment implementation was published on the municipality’s website and was available to all employees and stakeholders.

Success factors
  • The previous experience and knowledge in quality issues and tools of the Quality office
  • The well-planned work methodology and the support
  • The IT Department within the organization with experience in designing digital tools
  • The responsible and motivated self-assessment team members and their soft skills
Challenges
  • The first time of self – evaluation in the organization and some difficulties in comprehension of the CAF manual and the evaluation system (some questions were totally out of the box related to our institutional framework)
  • The lack of time of the self – assessment team members due to their daily responsibilities and tasks
  • The feeling of mistrust of the employees who participated in completing the questionnaire due to the new procedure of self – assessment

Success measurement

Regarding employees’ empowerment, all improvements actions made enhanced them of taking more active role. Initially, the digital project management platform that was developed in- house for file and data management was an effective way to structure and organize our files and data, as well as to facilitate and expand communication between employees of different units. Access to this platform is given only to project team members who sign in the platform on an intranet page. To measure the application’s efficiency and utility we monitor the average number of users connected to the application on a semi-annual basis. It is worth saying that there was an important increase of users during the first two years, as the employees started to feel more familiar with the platform environment and to acknowledge the benefits of a steady file structure, easy file sharing and safe keeping.

Secondly, the Improvement Proposal Template helped us to collect ideas and suggestions for solving some daily problems that the employees are facing. The proposals are collected and managed by the Efficiency and Quality Department. Through this process the employees are given the possibility to improve their work proposing a solution without all the bureaucracy. We monitor the indicator “implemented proposal improvements / submitted proposal improvements” annually. In the last five years 11 improvement proposals have been submitted (regarding mainly organizational issues and training needs) like eight out of them have been implemented until now.

In addition, the function of the Quality Team had as a consequence to enhance the feeling of participation in the decision making of the organization as well as to empower the working relationships among staff. Also, people who participate in Quality Team’s meetings share their knowledge, expertise, ideas and information. Generally, the Quality Team promotes a culture of continuous quality improvement throughout the organization. At least three Quality Team’s meeting take place every year. It also supports the implementation of the quality management system that we apply in the field of managing co-funded projects (ISO 9001:2015).

Furthermore, the development of a training process contributed to upgrade employees’ required knowledge, abilities and skills. Training programs focused mainly on project and quality management were organized in-house. Therefore, through internal learning mechanisms, generation and application of new knowledge and ideas was (and still is) triggered.

At the same time, the Quality Department had another application developed in – house by the IT Department in order to identify the employees’ training needs. The use of this platform, even by less than half of the municipality’ s staff, led to the conduction of specific seminars for targeted groups of the staff in the premises of our organization. Specifically, the organization of ten in-company training programs designed in accordance with our needs during the last five years. Generally, the Human Resources Department monitors the number of employees trained every year and the training hours.

The actions taken to increase community engagement and public participation in local affairs helped our organization to gather statistic metrics and other demographic, environmental, social data that had been used for the documentation of our strategies and policies. Questionnaires and online surveys were conducted for the composition of the Sustainable Urban Development (SUD) Strategy 2021-2027. What is more, the new Digital Consultation Platform is expected to strengthen citizens’ and other stakeholders’ participation in decision-making on local issues as well as to enhance further the organization’s state and reputation on this field.

As for the long term-effects of the implemented improvement measures, we intend to conduct satisfaction surveys for both employees and citizens. Also, we continue to monitor relevant indicators, such as:

  • The number of Quality Team meetings
  • Implemented proposal improvements / submitted proposal improvements
  • The number of employees trained every year
  • the training hours
  • The Number of in-company training programs
  • The Number of stakeholder consultations as well as the number of participants

The essence of the innovation and the transferability of the solutions introduced

The whole project of implementing the CAF model in our organization was an unprecedented procedure on its own, as it was the first time that the employees of the

Municipality were asked to evaluate their work in different functional areas. Although we all do our job daily, it was evident from the very beginning of the project that we lack ways of monitoring it. Thus, it was difficult to find the appropriate documentation to measure the results of our work. However, the excellent co-operation among the members of the working group, the share of knowledge and the exchange of experience and opinions led to the successful implementation of the self-assessment process and resulted, in the end, in a detailed and realistic action plan for the improvement of the organization.

The procedures and actions taken targeting to the employees’ empowerment and the enhancement of citizens’ involvement were new and innovative for our organization and the organizational culture of the majority of the staff.

It is our belief that all of them are easily transferable to other organizations:

Quality Team with responsibilities of promoting a quality culture throughout our organization, consisting of members of different units and representing different function areas. Such a team could (and should) exist in every organization to keep the quality mindset active.

Improvement Proposal Template for collecting employees’ needs and ideas. It is a quite simple form, that can be adjusted in every organization. The challenge here is to really take into consideration the improvement proposals submitted.

Project management platform for file sharing and data management in a unified way. We developed ours in-house, however there are various applications and platforms in the market.

In-house Training Programs are an easy way to enhance internal organizational learning and knowledge among the employees. Targeted meetings and workshops help the organization to continuously develop and improve its capabilities and skills. Thus, it can face challenges and exploit opportunities more effectively.

Citizens and Stakeholder consultation including online surveys, opinion polls, questionnaires, public meetings. This is not only of a great importance but it is essential as well to interact with citizens and stakeholders when significant strategic plans and projects are designed by the local authorities. Consultation is a main means for effective management, at the same time it raising awareness among the citizens about the issues of the city in which they live and work.

Digital Consultation Platform for allowing individuals and organizations to participate in the process of solving municipality issues through the participatory decision-making and the feedback by the citizens. The use of new technological tools, social media and chat apps for the expansion, mobilization of a larger number of participating citizens and businesses, as well as the automation of the consultation and collection of ideas process should be a constant goal for local government organizations. Such tools are available in the market and can easily be bargained. Once again, the challenge here is to take into consideration the citizens’ opinion.

All in all, we would say that our project was successful, due to the following key factors:

  • the Efficiency and Quality Department is composed by a small experienced and well-bonded team that managed the whole project in an excellent way
  • the in-house technological support by the IT department
  • the simultaneous implementation of Quality Management System in the field of managing co-funded projects
  • the commitment and good will of all the team members
  • the quality mindset and support of the General Manager and the Planning, Sustainable Development and New Technologies Directorate of the Municipality.

Lessons learnt

The implementation of the CAF alongside with ISO 9001 in our organization has provided a wealth of insights that can serve as a roadmap for other institutions seeking to enhance their quality management and service delivery. From our experience, three key lessons emerged that are crucial for the success of similar projects:

1.  The Power of a Dedicated Team:

A fundamental lesson from our project is the irreplaceable value of assembling a dedicated, multidisciplinary team. We formed a CAF implementation team that included members from various levels and departments, selected not only for their familiarity with quality tools but also for their strong communication and collaborative skills. This diverse group was instrumental in performing a comprehensive evaluation of our processes and in identifying areas for improvement. Their commitment and synergy were key to overcoming the initial challenges associated with the self-assessment process. For instance, team members who participated in training sessions and worked together to set up our digital repository contributed significantly to building a culture of continuous improvement. The lesson here is clear: investing in team development, ensuring proper training, and fostering an environment of trust and open communication are essential. Other institutions should prioritize the formation of a dedicated team, as the expertise and cohesiveness of the team directly influence the quality and sustainability of improvement initiatives.

2.  Leadership Commitment is Essential:

The second lesson highlights the critical role of strong and committed leadership in driving quality improvement initiatives. Our project was successfully advanced by the active support of senior management, particularly from the General Manager’s Office and the Planning, Sustainable Development and New Technologies Directorate. This leadership provided strategic direction, ensured the allocation of necessary resources, and maintained focus on the project’s goals, even in the face of initial resistance and time constraints. Leadership engagement was not a passive endorsement; it was a proactive, visible involvement that inspired the entire workforce. By consistently communicating the benefits and progress of the project, our leadership helped to build confidence among employees. This clear demonstration of commitment fostered an organizational culture where quality improvement became a shared goal rather than a top-down mandate. Institutions looking to implement similar projects should ensure that their leadership is not only supportive but also actively involved in all phases of the project, from planning through execution to follow-up. Strong leadership paves the way for overcoming obstacles and ensures that change is embedded into the organization’s culture.

3.  Integration of Quality Tools Enhances Results:

The third key lesson from our experience is the significant advantage of integrating multiple quality frameworks. ISO 9001:2015, with its emphasis on standardized procedures, documented processes, and risk-based thinking, provided us with a strong operational foundation. When this was combined with CAF’s holistic self-assessment approach, which encompasses strategic leadership, stakeholder engagement, and people-oriented evaluations, the result was a robust, comprehensive framework for improvement. This dual approach allowed us to address not only the technical aspects of process efficiency but also the broader elements of organizational culture and stakeholder satisfaction. The synergy between these two systems led to more effective planning, better measurement of performance, and ultimately, a higher level of service delivery. For instance, while ISO 9001:2015 ensured that our processes were reliable and consistent, CAF pushed us to evaluate and improve our interactions with both employees and the public. This integrated methodology provided a more complete picture of our organization’s strengths and weaknesses, allowing for targeted and sustainable improvements. Other institutions are encouraged to consider a similar integrated approach. By leveraging the complementary strengths of different quality management systems, organizations can achieve a more balanced, effective, and innovative pathway to continuous improvement.

Read the
complete study

About the author(s)

Triantafyllia Triantafyllidou
Municipality of Volos
Greece

Other best practices

See all best practices
Greece
Written by: Triantafyllia Triantafyllidou
of Municipality of Volos

Read also:

CAFficiency (www.cafficiency.suk.gov.rs)

Received Golden Case recognition at the CAF Users Event 2025 in Warsaw
September 2025 -
The Human Resources Management Service (Government of the Republic of Serbia)
, Serbia