Public Administration and Issues Relating to Government Performance

Gauging government performance provokes a diversity of opinion and outright disagreement.

No one fully agrees on the right way to measure what government does.

This is partly because government performance cannot be measured solely in economic terms, like profits in the world of business.

Measuring government performance entails gauging how well government performs its duties and functions.

This includes using both internal measurements, such as productivity of employees, and external measurements, such as deciding if government has reduced the incidence of problems like crime or poverty.

Privatization involves examining the proper balance between the public and private sectors.

Proponents of privatization believe that government should spend its time governing and let the private sector produce and deliver most public services.

The idea that government should privatize services because it cannot match private sector efficiency did not set well with traditional modes of thought in public administration.

A number of measures are used to gauge a business’ performance, such as return on investment, market share, and customer satisfaction, but all relate to “making money”.

Productivity (typically defined as the ratio of inputs to outputs) in the private sector also relates to money.

In the private sector, companies pay attention to the efficiency of their operations because failure to do so will result in the loss of profits and ultimately cause the firm to go broke.

One of the enduring questions in the public sector is whether government should be managed like a business.

Critics have long argued that if government would just manage itself like a business, it would enhance its efficiency (spend less money and time to produce comparable levels of service) and effectiveness (do a better job of attaining goals).

But, in the public sector, there is no comparable measurement of profit, market share, or return on investment; and the customer in the private sector is not exactly the equivalent of citizens in the public sector.

Government performance is much more complex and difficult to measure than the performance of businesses in the private sector, as government operates under a very different set of assumptions.

Because of the difference between the public and private sector, it seems reasonable to use measures to gauge government performance that are different from those used in business.

First of all, government does not produce products, such as washing machines, computers, or automobiles.

Government typically provides a broad range of services and cannot quantify unit coasts or measure productivity as easily as the private sector.

In the US, the General Accounting Office (GAO) estimated that a 5 percent increase in productivity at the federal level would save $4.5 billion annually.

Second of all, government is left with many of the tasks that the private sector does not want to perform or cannot perform, such as resolving poverty, welfare, and crime issues; administering justice; and taking care of the sewage.

Third of all, government is responsible for regulation and oversight.

Although the idea of self-regulation of industries has gained popularity, the only reason that it may work is because of the threat of government regulation.

Government deals with many public goods, while the private sector deals with private goods.

The argument that government is “different” is still very much a part of the government productivity and performance debate.

Thus, the public-private dichotomy remains an issue in the new century.

The bottom line for a business is profit; for the government it has been described as power and politics.

The system is driven by politics, not economics.

Most major issues are very complex and difficult to measure.

National defense, for instance, is a very difficult activity to measure.

If the country is not attacked by any enemy, is that because of powerful military and huge defense spending or is that because there would not be any enemy incursion anyway?

Are all spending on defense wasted then?

As another example, do we measure the effectiveness of airline safety, which is managed by the Federal Aviation Administration in the US (FAA), on the number of airline crashes that occurred during a specified time period?

If there are no crashes during a 10-year period, does that mean that airline safety measures were working?

Or is it possible we were just lucky?

When disaster strikes, we turn to government and demand that it take action (the reactive nature of public policy), and often we blame government for not doing enough or not foreseeing the disaster in advance.

Public administration has gone through a variety of phases dealing with evaluation of its performance.

From 1900 until the 1940s, efficiency was among the primary goals of public administration.

Making government more efficient and business like was viewed as a way to end the rampant corruption associated with that era.

One of the key principles was to make public administration more professional.

It was believed that professional managers using the right techniques could increase efficiency while ending corruption.

This era was followed by budgetary reforms to control spending.

In the 1970s, public administrators tried to enhance the efficiency of public organizations through better managerial techniques.

The 1980s were characterized by the privatization movement, which argued that government should increase the role of the private sector to provide public services.

Since the private sector is more efficient than government, it was argued, efficiency would increase if government turned over many public services to private firms.

In the 1990s, the reinventing government movement was introduced.

This movement suggested that government should be more concerned with results than process to increase efficiency.

Public administrators should be empowered with the freedom needed to effectively manage public agencies, which would in turn enhance efficiency and effectiveness.

Gaugin Government Performance: A Closer View

Since the 1970s, all levels of government have paid closer attention to performance and productivity.

It was recognized that government had no comprehensive method for evaluating the performance of programs.

Thus, public program evaluation worked its way into the mainstream of government.

Program evaluation is similar to policy evaluation, but it is usually conducted by agencies, with reports provided to the appropriate member of the legislature and executive branch.

Public program evaluations are systematic studies and reviews that examine productivity, costs, and effectiveness of government programs.

However, the main concern of most program evaluations is effectiveness, or measuring outcomes and goals.

Program evaluations take many forms but are usually conducted after a program has been functioning for some time.

Evaluations provide an indication about whether the program is achieving stated objectives and goals, and they are helpful at budget time when agencies lobby legislatures for money.

Program evaluations can be used for a variety of purposes, which include trying to improve programs, justifying the existence of programs, and investigating and auditing programs in order to abolish them, blame them for failure, or change leadership in an agency.

Program evaluation usually involves developing research designs to perform outcome evaluations that often use cost-benefit analyses.

Some of the basic questions raised in a program evaluation include: What are the objectives of the program?

Is the program achieving the objectives?

What progress has been made during the time the program has been functioning?

What financial and other costs are being used to achieve the stated goals?

Are there alternatives or improvements that can be made to make the program work more effectively and efficiently?

Are there any unintended consequences caused by the program?

What recommendations can be made to improve performance?

Before a program evaluation can be conducted, performance measures and indicators must be established.

Economists believe that most services provided by local governments are not public goods and therefore can be provided by the private sector.

At one time, for instance, most local governments that collected garbage using in-house departments did not know how much it cost to stop the garbage truck at each house in a residential area, that is, the unit cost per household.

Today, most cities are well aware of their unit costs.

When performance measures are implemented in government, they often lead to what is called perverse measures.

Perverse measures refer to inaccurate measurements (or poorly constructed indicators) that do not accurately reflect whatever is being measured.

Usually, perverse measurements involve the attempt to quantify something that is not easily quantifiable.

How does a city judge the efficiency and effectiveness of summer youth programs offered in the inner city?

Does it count the number of programs it was able to provide with a specified amount of funding and the cost of each program?

Does it use the number of people who participated in the programs and the cost per participant?

Or is the real measure reflected later in the number of young people who did not end up in the criminal justice system?

How does one measure performance of a police officer?

Should performance be measured by the number of arrests the police make, or the number of calls to which he respond?

Performance measures provide the data to calculate unit costs, measure satisfaction, and measure the quality and quantity of services.

Local governments in the US have been innovators in developing citizen satisfaction surveys, which partially replicate the idea of customer satisfaction data collected by businesses.

Since the 1970s, all levels of government have made progress toward creating ways to measure what they do, but governments have not been able to develop and consistently employ performance standards that are comparable to the private sector.

Part of the reason is because efficiency is not the cardinal virtue of most public organizations.

Many of government measurements on programs and services unfortunately will be perverse measurements because the work of government cannot be universally quantified in terms of profit, return on investment, and the like.

Many officials view that nature of government work to be so unique and divers that it cannot be subjected to standardized performance measures.

Many managerial techniques have been employed to try to enhance the quality of government services and improve performance.

Total quality management (TQM) is one of those techniques that were developed during the 1920s.

Total quality management is a managerial philosophy, a set of principles, and a series of quantitative techniques that are designed to continuously improve production process to ensure that customers are satisfied with an organization’s products, performance, procedures, and people.

Despite the best efforts of reformers and the adoption of innovative techniques like TQM, government remains much less efficient than the private sector at producing services and less effective at developing meaningful ways to measure performance.

Efficiency compressions between government and private organizations performing similar tasks almost always favor the private sector.

Thus, during the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, many argued that government could greatly improve its efficiency by privatizing services.