Despite long-standing international use of performance measurement by governments, its effectiveness is still limited. This paper addresses practices and outcomes of performance measurement in one developed country, Australia.
Using published government documents together with interviews of officials, the research found that the level of reported performance had little impact on the level of budget funding, partly because many performance measures were so poor that they gave little information on program success, but mostly due to funding being driven by factors other than performance measurement.
The research also found, not surprisingly, that organisations that produced measurable services, such as health agencies, had better quality performance measures than those whose products were harder to define, such as policy agencies. External forces, such as review by independent bodies, were more important than internal characteristics of the performance management system such as resourcing and status of performance measurement in driving improvements to performance measures.
Recognising that the espoused policy is for sound and reliable performance measures, the reasons for failure (in some cases) to approach this objective is explored using a systems approach. This means, among other things, considering forces in the environment that provide incentives for this avoidance of sound performance measurement. If there is poor performance information, who benefits? The answer is, in some cases, executives and politicians who are then able to preserve ambiguity and therefore flexibility.
These considerations lead to potential approaches to improve performance measures. The systems perspective provides an understanding that standard approaches to improving quality, such as guidance, training, increased resources and strengthened legislation, may be less significant than other influences such as culture, fear of bad news and the extent of incentives (positive or negative). With many of these latter influences encouraging unclear performance measurement it is not surprising that the quality of performance information remains deficient. This indicates that the quality of measures might be improved by focusing at the jurisdictional level, using mechanisms such as independent monitoring and review of the quality of performance measures. ‘What gets measured gets managed’ applies to the topic of performance measurement as well as it does to the areas of government administration being measured.
H2 - Performance management in the public sector – practices and real effects in developed
