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Making Government Accountable: Lessons from a Federal Job Training Program
Author(s) -
Courty Pascal,
Marschke Gerald
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
public administration review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.721
H-Index - 139
eISSN - 1540-6210
pISSN - 0033-3352
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-6210.2007.00777.x
Subject(s) - agency (philosophy) , government (linguistics) , process (computing) , training (meteorology) , performance measurement , business , public relations , computer science , political science , marketing , sociology , social science , linguistics , philosophy , physics , meteorology , operating system
This article describes the evolution of a performance measurement system in a government job training program. In this program, a federal agency establishes performance measures and standards for substate agencies. The performance measurement system’s evolution is at least partly explained as a process of trial and error characterized by a feedback loop: The federal agency establishes performance measures, the local managers learn how to game them, the federal agency learns about gaming and reformulates the performance measures, possibly leading to new gaming, and so on. The dynamics suggest that implementing a performance measurement system in government is not a one‐time challenge but benefits from careful monitoring and perhaps frequent revision.