"quasi-autonomous national government organisation, and often rendered as 'qango' This spawned the related acronym qualgo, a 'quasi-autonomous local government organisation'. The less contentious term non-departmental public body (NDPB) is often employed to identify numerous organisations with devolved governmental responsibilities. Examples in the United Kingdom include those engaged in the regulation of various commercial and service sectors, such as the Water Services Regulation Authority. The UK government's definition in 1997 of a non-departmental public body or quango was: Criticisms The Times has accused quangos of bureaucratic waste and excess. 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. See also Penelope Lyttelton, Viscountess Cobham – nicknamed the "Quango Queen" Departments of the United Kingdom Government Government-organized non-governmental organization (GONGO) Government agency Independent agency New York state public-benefit corporations Off-budget enterprise Scottish public bodies Welsh Government sponsored body Non-departmental public body References External links Read Before Burning: Arm's length government for a new administration – report by the Institute for Government about the quango landscape Civil Service – Government Departments and Accredited NDPBs Economic Research Council – online database of all UK quangos 1998–2006 Richard Allen and Dimitar Radev, "Managing and Controlling Extrabudgetary Funds", OECD Journal of Budgeting, Vol. 6, No. 4, 2006 Carsten Greve, Matthew Flinders, Sandra Van Thiel (1999), Quangos—What's in a Name? Defining Quangos from a Comparative Perspective, Governance 12 (2), 129–146 UK government site about the process of making public appointments Quango name 'source of ridicule', files from 1980 show Government bodies Political terminology 1967 neologisms