Technical forms of production are very dependent on quality control to minimise the variation in their product from the requirements. This means the customer gets a consistent product or service every time. Consequently in industrial parlance quality means minimum of variation from the requirements or specifications. We can probably start looking at Parliament as having inbuilt quality mechanisms to produce quality legislation where policy substitutes in the role of requirements.

This was provoked by Lynn Allison's comment in a speech where she spoke on the Broadcasting Bill Amendment 2007:

I think it is not unreasonable to say that the government should have sorted out these problems before we had to deal with the bill itself.

Allison is talking about the Senate in quality control terms. I have not thought of parliament in that way, but it makes sense that there be statutorial rigour and mechanisms to ensure that legislation matches the specifications closely.

Unfortunately Australia's use of the Westminster system means that there is poor separation of powers between executive and legislative, so policy and legislation come from executive cabinet.

The committee systems are a relatively new innovation in the Australian federal system and act as an important process in collecting requirements from the end-users (and those ultimately paying for it) in the public.

Committees can also act as post production reviews of the product's (the legislation and policy's) performance. This suggests that the committees are more important than the time they get in the media or the public consciousness from a quality control point of view.

One of the reasons I am in favour of permanent sortitionist body, apart from being useful in unearthing corruption, is that they will be able to empirically review policy outcomes - act as an a non-political and non-partisan quality review board. The sortitionists basically act as customer representatives (they are customers as taxpayers).

Another idea I like is adam's of spontaneous citizen auditors, who can form as an active FOI body. Auditing government for corruption, but also policy outcomes.

The current government has control of the House and Senate through elected majorities, unfortunately, because of the strength of executive discipline in bloc voting, this has led to poor quality control outcomes. Legislation, as Allison is arguing, has not gone through a proper quality control process of review in cabinet or committee before being tabled as legislation in parliament.

It would be wise to view parliament from a quality control point of view, and audit it constantly, and frequently, from that perspective.

Leakage. This has been happening a lot lately. Apparently Starbucks uses a cup which contains 10% recycled material. From here:

Starbucks was the first company in the United States to use 10 percent PCF fiber in hot beverage cups ... We pay a slight premium for the PCF cups and we believe the long-term impact of using this more environmentally-friendly option is worth the additional cost.

I thought it was a quality control problem but maybe it is the material itself that is causing quality issues. Engineering being what it is, and the desire to dampen variability in any product, will most likely mean any consumer based issues relating to the use of a new material will quickly be engineered out.