Performance Management in Public Services

- What is meant by performance in the public service context, and how can it best be measured?
- Should a service be judged by, say, its accessibility or its financial cost, and who should do the judging?
- How can moves to increase the managerial responsibilities and decision-making powers of public servants be reconciled with democratic control and effective auditing procedures?
- How do we restore to our fellow citizens a sense of involvement in and ownership of key public services?
- How do we restore trust in the professionals who work in them?
- How do we give real local character and pride to hospitals, schools and other public services?

Ensuring participation and civic engagement in policy design and monitoring of reforms is expected to increase commitment and reform outcomes. Many administrations now support this approach, as they increasingly acknowledge that social dialogue and community enforcement are part of the agenda of democratic governance. The main challenge is how to make reforms achieve their goal. This is the basic idea underlying performance-oriented budgeting and management: to shift the emphasis away from controlling inputs and towards achieving results.

Initially it can begin by preparing group dialogues by consulting in a broad sense with civil society representatives, including NGOs, indigenous associations, local governments, academics, and the private sector. These consultations and other meetings with representatives of civic movements, intellectuals, the private financial sector and small enterprises, serve as input into initial drafting, policy design and funding.

As example, in Argentina, social concerns regarding public service delivery were assessed and an attempt made to engage the population in implementing potential solutions. A survey was conducted, interviews held with 100 participants, and three focus groups discussed social demands and key concerns in-depth. To acquire loans, transparency and accountability are more relevant issues. The study found increased citizen participation in monitoring policy implementation, with the emergence of mechanisms for citizen oversight, governmental accountability, and citizens’ access to information, as well as social inclusion measures to secure civil rights.

There is still much to do with respect to measuring the impact of civic engagement on efforts to improve public service provision. Such an assessment requires an extended period of time to observe impacts. Nonetheless, it is unquestionable that citizens’ rights and governance are promoted. Works continue to create capacities within civil society to monitor public management and service delivery. At the same time, governments need to provide greater transparency and access to information so that citizens can monitor governmental activities.

Studies have highlighted the importance of governance in shaping how well private sector firms perform. Much less is known about the role both leaders and governance play in influencing public sector performance. Governments have been engaged in reviewing and reforming the ways in which they keep control over large and complex operations in public services and how those responsible are held to account. Reasons include increasing claims on public expenditure, particularly pensions, healthcare and education, expectations of higher quality public services in line with rising living standards and, in many cases, reluctance on the part of citizens to pay ever higher taxes. Government also has to be more competitive in the face of other potential suppliers in areas like transport, communications and energy. It must show it can do the job it sets out to do.

There is ample evidence that with improvement of technologies, knowledge and knowhows people’s interest to intervene in their community are rising. The increase of choices in other areas of life has also raised level of expectation for delivery of public services. There appears to be a rising level of dissatisfaction with the policies for improvement since resources and tools are expected to bring about more rather than less equitable society. We see a crisis of trust, and a cynicism towards politicians and their ability to deliver solutions.

The government's desire to modernise public services tend toward increase of central control over public services and local government which can waste the public's money. The Gershon report for the Treasury estimated an annual cost of some £8bn for the central regulation of public services. At the same time, this central control has stifled the innovation and enterprise of frontline staff. The Treasury has already reported that local government is producing more efficiency savings than any other part of the public sector. Councils are redesigning their services around the user. We must give people back power and influence over their local service and the future of the places where they live.

The traditional accountability mechanisms hold ministries and agencies answerable for results. But action to change this is underway, to move away from external supervisors approving payments and other decisions in advance–so-called ex ante control–towards systems that internal management taking decisions first, but are subject to audits afterwards–ex post control. This is a change to develop faster and efficient decision making process with shifting large responsibility on public sector managers for taking right decisions in the first place and not just in payment transactions but in strategic management. In other words, better accountability can improve performance, too.

The importance is to back up performance-driven procedures with appropriate accounting and control mechanisms, and ensuring that the two develop in concert with each other. To this end, basing decisions on several types of information is a necessary and realistic approach, and so output performance is considered as part of a package that includes information on fiscal policy and even political factors.
Government shifting the balance of power and policymaking to locally-based officials, leads power to be exercised with and for local people. Similarly, councils must rise to the challenge of a more devolved system. They must be ambitious for their communities, be determined to devolve power further, relentless in driving for continuous improvement, and fearless in shifting responsibility and accountability from government to council leaders.



References:

Towards Sustainable Water-Supply Solutions in Rural Sierra Leone, Oxfam GB Research Report, April 2006

The Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance, DFID, 2004

From Shouting to Counting, the lessons from communities, World Bank, 2004

T. Curristine, Performance and accountability: Making government work, OECD, 2005

D. Cameron, Public Services, www.conservatives.com

S. Lockhart, the Local Government Association