Managing Performance in the Public Sector: Concepts Considerations and Challenges

Abstract

One of the critical functions of public management is efficient, economic and effective use of resources to provide value-for-money service delivery to citizens. Performance management in the public service is an attempt to balance an institutional centredness with a citizen orientation and it incorporates issues such as productivity (outputs over inputs), quality, accountability and policy outcomes. Measuring performance in the public sector is not a simple task because various qualitative and sometimes, unquantifiable variables have to be considered. These qualitative aspects - such as the general welfare of a community - are complex and intangible and hence make performance improvement and productivity measurement extremely difficult. The improvement of performance embraces far more than calculable or quantitative criteria to determine how many resources have been expended to achieve specified objectives. Performance improvement should become a way of evaluating the entire institutional context within which services and/or products are provided.

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