Performance-based outcome measures Research Papers (original) (raw)

From the late 1980s, public policy makers and service providers have been concerned with how to conceptualise, measure and, eventually, improve the quality of public services. Subsequently, there has been considerable interest in... more

From the late 1980s, public policy makers and service providers have been concerned with how to conceptualise, measure and, eventually, improve the quality of public services. Subsequently, there has been considerable interest in outcome-based public policy making and management. The UK has been in the forefront of this movement, but similar trends have been identified in the USA (Moynihan, 2005), Australia (Hoque, 2008) and elsewhere in Europe (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004).
This interest in both quality management and outcome-based decision-making has been given particular impetus through the ‘results’-based movement in evaluation and performance management since the 1980s, which has increased in scope over time, slowly changing its emphasis from a services focus - cost reduction, measuring outputs, assuring quality - to measuring quality of life outcomes experienced by citizens (Audit Commission, 1991; Heinrich, 2002). This change has been widely welcomed by policy makers, practitioners and academics.
Meanwhile, there has been a recasting of the age-old concern with principles of government as ‘principles of governance’, and a growing interest in evaluating whether or not such principles are actually being implemented in practice. Since it is a basic axiom of Western philosophy that ‘the ends do not justify the means’, measuring conformity to these principles of governance would seem to be an essential complement to measuring achievement of quality of life outcomes.
This paper therefore outlines the evolution of interest in service quality, followed by the increasing attention to outcome-based public policy making up to recent times and the growing realisation of the importance of the attribution problem. It then charts the growth of the parallel concern with measuring achievement of the principles of governance. The paper then demonstrates the interlinkages between these three arenas of performance improvement, which are driven by different stakeholders, i.e.:
• Service quality (driven by service users),
• Quality of life outcomes (driven by disadvantaged groups),
• Public governance (driven by ‘watchdog’ type organizations).