Executive agencies are "machinery of government" devices distinct both from non-ministerial government departments and non-departmental public bodies (or "quangos"), each of which enjoy legal and constitutional separation from ministerial control.
Its main goal was to identify what good practices had emerged from the new model and spread them to other agencies and departments.
A series of reports and white papers examining governmental delivery were published throughout the 1990s, under both Conservative and Labour governments.
A later review (in 2002, linked below) made two central conclusions (their emphasis): "The agency model has been a success.
In the United States, the Clinton administration imported the model under the name "performance-based organizations.
Executive agencies were also established in Australia, Jamaica, Japan and Tanzania.