Performance Measurement and Improvement: an Assessment of the State of the Art
| Published date | 01 March 2004 |
| Date | 01 March 2004 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852304041228 |
| Author | Kaifeng Yang,Marc Holzer |
| Subject Matter | Journal Article |
Performance measurement and improvement: an assessment
of the state of the art
Marc Holzer and Kaifeng Yang
Abstract
This article attempts to show the frontier of government performance measurement.
First, it introduces the sophisticated and effective strategies that public agencies have
utilized for performance measurement within a comprehensive approach to produc-
tivity improvement. Multiple measures have been developed to improve a variety of
management functions such as goal-setting and resource allocation. The article then
outlines the cutting edge of performance measurement. Based on a number of case
studies throughout the United States, this article discusses the state of the art in three
performance areas: citizen-driven government performance, use of citizen surveys
and performance reporting. Finally, the article concludes that the essential question
in the future is how government can move to full adoption and implementation of
citizen-driven, data-driven decision-making.
Introduction
Is performance improvement in the public sector feasible? For decades, elected and
politically appointed officials have argued that such improvement is both necessary
and possible but their suggested strategies have been markedly simplistic: ‘cut the
fat’, ‘reduce government’s appetite for resources’, ‘adopt private sector efficiencies’,
etc. As a result, the public has come to expect that performance improvement in the
public sector can be accomplished through any number of quick fixes. But does such
a strategy reflect the reality of public performance improvement?
This article argues that, contrary to the assumptions of government’s critics, public
Marc Holzer is a Professor of Public Administration at Rutgers University, where he serves as execu-
tive director of the National Center for Public Productivity. Kaifeng Yangis an Assistant Professor of
Public Administration at Florida State University, and a senior research associate of the National Center
for Public Productivity. CDU: 65.012.3
Copyright © 2004 IIAS, SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
Vol 70(1):15–31 [DOI:10.1177/0020852304041228]
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
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agencies necessarily utilize sophisticated strategies for performance improvement
(Hatry and Wholey, 1992). Those strategies are substantially grounded in a well-
developed literature on performance measurement. Furthermore, the most innova-
tive and productive agencies, as exemplified by the cases described later, do not
simply execute one good program. Rather, they integrate advanced management
techniques into a comprehensive approach to productivity improvement (United Way
of America, 1997). Productive government agencies stress multiple measures: inter-
nal capacities, outputs produced and outcomes achieved. They use performance
measurement and evaluation to help establish goals and measure results, estimate
and justify resource requirements, reallocate resources, develop organization-
improvement strategies and motivate employees to improve performance.
We present evidence that such a body of knowledge has a long history and con-
tinues to develop as a function of case-based experimentation throughout the United
States. Finally, we suggest some promising directions for the cutting edge of that
research.
The continuing need for performance measurement
Performance measurement has been touted as an improvement strategy for govern-
ment for decades (Ridley and Simon, 1943). Agencies have not, however, always
built the capacity for measurement that can highlight both progress and the need for
critical investments to a range of stakeholders — citizens, businessmen, legislators,
interest groups, etc. (Nyhan and Marlowe, 1995).
Yet measurement of performance has always been implicit in questions by those
stakeholders as to outputs and outcomes: Is crime up? Is the air quality better? How
well are our children doing in school? In short, is a program producing the promised
results? The answers to such questions are important. They can provide feedback
that influences decisions to allocate or reallocate public sector resources and to set or
change priorities. Such decisions are made ‘internally’ by governors, agency heads,
public managers and legislators. They are substantially influenced ‘externally’ by feed-
back from citizens, public-interest advocacy groups, private businesses and their
elected or media surrogates. Each of these actors — internal or external — holds
opinions as to service priorities. However, such opinions as to the allocation of scarce
public resources are often based upon vague assessments of efficiency and efficacy,
judgments that are typically subjective and ‘soft’. They may be formed from a critical
incident of success or failure. They may be grounded in a rumor. They may be a
function of personal experience.
Objective performance measurement offers an opportunity to develop and
present ‘hard’ data instead. Measurement provides an opportunity to present evi-
dence that the public sector is a public bargain, to highlight the routine but important
services that public servants quietly provide and to answer the public’s sometimes-
angry questions and implicit suggestions on a dispassionate basis. Measurement
helps to move the basis of decision-making from personal experience to proof of
measurable accomplishment or lack thereof. Data about levels and trends in outputs,
outcomes and associated benefit/cost ratios help defend, expand or improve a pro-
gram, rather than proceeding from relatively subjective, political decisions based on
16 International Review of Administrative Sciences 70(1)
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