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]

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".