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Good Practice

Good Practice (GP) is a project which the Politecnico di Torino has adopted since its first edition and in which a group of Universities, increasingly larger from year to year, compare notes on the effectiveness and efficiency of the services provided to their users with the aim of pooling good practices and focusing on continuous quality improvement actions.
Launched on a pilot basis with 10 ‘pioneering’ universities in 1998, by the time the latest edition (GP 2025) concluded, the project had seen the participation of a total of 65 institutions, comprising 52 state universities, 7 non-state universities and 6 secondary schools. The service users are considered to be the student body and university staff: teaching and research staff, research fellows, PhD students, technical staff, administrative staff and library staff.
A central component of the project is the annual survey and subsequent evaluation of the level of satisfaction of the student population and staff with the services they use on a daily basis and which are provided by each university. The periodic survey is more commonly known as the customer satisfaction survey.

The comparison makes it possible to analyse and evaluate the main services provided by Universities in five thematic areas:

  • Teaching;
  • Research and TT;
  • Libraries;
  • Infrastructures (buildings, facilities, logistics, ICT);
  • Administration.

The services surveyed are:

  • Teaching support
  • Research and academic staff support
  • Student guidance
  • Student offices
  • Libraries
  • Job placement and Career services
  • Right to education
  • Internationalisation
  • IT systems
  • Staff support
  • Logistics and general services (e.g. lecture theatres and laboratories)
  • Procurement
  • Communication, web portals and social media
  • Accounting

The Politecnico di Torino believes that it is of fundamental importance to periodically survey its users' perceptions of the services it manages and delivers, both to acknowledge those that are most appreciated and valued by the student population and staff, and to set itself clear objectives for growth and improvement. With these aims in mind, for some years now, the University has been “launching” customer satisfaction surveys, which provide an important opportunity for the users of our community to point out which services work very well and well, but also those on which satisfaction appears to be lower.


The customer satisfaction surveys are carried out annually by proposing to the student population and staff an online questionnaire common to all members of the GP project, in which the Politecnico di Torino integrates additional questions of specific interest to our University. After each survey, the answers are analysed and the most significant results are published in order to share with users the state of the services, the trends in satisfaction, the strengths and the areas for improvement to work on.

The analysis of user satisfaction levels for the various services provided makes it possible to identify quantitative indicators and objectives to improve the perceived quality, which are assigned year after year to the Administration units. The objectives for continuous improvement are described in the Performance Measurement and Evaluation System, while a summary of the results achieved each year is provided in the Performance Reports, which are approved by the Board of Directors.

The analysis of user satisfaction also enables the identification of quality indicators, in particular indicators of perceived quality, which allow for the monitoring of the areas of interest and services defined in the University Service Charter (in italian Carta dei Servizi di Ateneo - CDS).

The CDS describes the services through concise, essential and up-to-date information sheets for a wide range of users, including students, young people and families, graduates, PhD students, research fellows, scholarship holders, staff, public and private bodies, institutions, businesses and guests.

The project is coordinated at the University level by the STARQ Area which oversees the collection efficiency data, the preparation of customer satisfaction surveys, the analysis of the results and the coordination with the Administration structures for specific workshops that are activated within the framework of the individual GP editions.


The Good Practice project is coordinated by POLIMI – Graduate School of Management.