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Accountability or Countability? Performance Measurement in the New Zealand Public Service, 1992–2002
Author(s) -
Lonti Zsuzsanna,
Gregory Robert
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
australian journal of public administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.524
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-8500
pISSN - 0313-6647
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8500.2007.00557.x
Subject(s) - accountability , performance indicator , performance measurement , service (business) , production (economics) , public sector , process (computing) , quality (philosophy) , public service , business , outcome (game theory) , accounting , economics , process management , public economics , public administration , marketing , computer science , microeconomics , political science , economy , law , philosophy , epistemology , operating system
This article examines how output classes and performance indicators have changed between 1992 and 2002 in five selected departments of the New Zealand Public Service. Process, output and largely artificial service quality performance measures have crowded out outcome, efficiency and effectiveness indicators, across the board. Both output classes and performance indicators have been highly labile, though the reasons for this remain speculative in the meantime. The New Zealand state sector is currently implementing a ‘managing for outcomes’ strategy, intended to overcome too strong a preoccupation with the production of outputs. However, because output classes remain the key feature of the Public Finance Act 1989 the means of ensuring and demonstrating policy effectiveness must be more broadly based than a reliance on the countability of organisational output classes and performance measures.