From Measurement to Management: Breaking through the Barriers to State and Local Performance

The Winter Commission’s aspirations for improvement of governance at the state and local level resulted in proposals to modernize public institutions and systems to remove the barriers on executive and managerial authority to act. Improving government performance and accountability to citizens requires leadership to empower employees by reducing rules, increasing discretion, and rewarding innovation. The performance measurement movement and its related performance management movement are public management trends of wide influence in state and local government that are both an adjunct to, and a reflection of those aspirations. Case studies of cities that have sought to develop and use performance measurement and engage citizens demonstrate great potential to improve governance and manage for results that citizens want. But even exemplary jurisdictions face challenges using evidence‐based, data‐driven performance management approaches. Promoting best practice requires better scholarship to understand the determinants of successful implementation, adoption, and use of performance measurement. The outcomes of performance management systems are generally unmeasured and little is known about their cost effectiveness or endurance over time. The promise is there, but our expectations should be tempered.     

Aid: A mixed blessing

Despite a growing emphasis by aid agencies on local participation and consultation, the recipients of aid commonly have mixed, if not hostile, responses to relief assistance. Agencies need to acknowledge the inequalities that are inherent in an aid relationship, and be more judicious in determining their proper role. The author calls for aid providers and recipients to accept our innate human equality and our circumstantial inequality in order to establish relationships of mutual respect and contemporaneous enjoyment of each other.