Organization design and frontline service improvement in government

Over the last decade there has been a dramatic expansion in use of non-financial performance measures for government organizations. Often, governments have limited themselves to what may be called "performance measurement"--Choosing measures and reporting performance against them. In this situation, the words typically associated with the effort are "accountability" and "transparency." Political overseers are made aware of performance, and may then react based on a judgment about whether performance is good or bad. Other times, government organizations have gone beyond measurement to "performance management" -- using measures as a tool to improve performance along dimensions measured, not just record performance levels assumed to be unchanging. The basic idea is that various non-financial performance measures serve as a role analogous to the profit measure in firms for encouraging better performance. Performance management is thus seen as a potentially power tool to remedy underperformance in government.