A Brookings Institution Press and Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation publication It started two decades ago with CompStat in the New York City Police Department, and quickly jumped to police agencies across the U.S. and other nations. It was adapted by Baltimore, which created CitiStat—the first application of this leadership strategy to an entire jurisdiction. Today, governments at all levels employ PerformanceStat: a focused effort by public executives to exploit the power of purpose and motivation, responsibility and discretion, data and meetings, analysis and learning, feedback and follow-up—all to improve government's performance. Here, Harvard leadership and management guru Robert Behn analyzes the leadership behaviors at the core of PerformanceStat to identify how they work to produce results. He examines how the leaders of a variety of public organizations employ the strategy—the way the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services uses its DPSSTATS to promote economic independence, how the City of New Orleans uses its BlightStat to eradicate blight in city neighborhoods, and what the Federal Emergency Management Agency does with its FEMAStat to ensure that the lessons from each crisis response, recovery, and mitigation are applied in the future. How best to harness the strategy's full capacity? The PerformanceStat Potential explains all.

"It started two decades ago with CompStat in the New York City Police Department but quickly jumped to other public agencies in New York and to police agencies internationally. Baltimore created CitiStat - the first application of this leadership strategy to an entire jurisdiction. Today, governments at all levels employ PerformanceStat: a focused effort to exploit the power of purpose and motivation, responsibility and discretion, data and meetings, analysis and learning, feedback and follow-up - all to improve government's performance. Robert Behn analyzes the leadership behaviors at the core of PerformanceStat to identify how they work to produce results. He examines how the leaders of public organizations employ the strategy - for example, how the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services uses its DPSSTATS to promote economic independence, how the City of New Orleans uses its BlightStat to eradicate urban blight, how the Federal Emergency Management Agency uses its FEMAStat to capture and apply lessons from each crisis response, recovery, and mitigation. How best to harness its full capacity? The PerformanceStat Potential explains all." --

It started two decades ago with CompStat in the New York City Police Department, and quickly jumped to police agencies across the U.S. and other nations. It was adapted by Baltimore, which created CitiStat the first application of this leadership strategy to an entire jurisdiction. Today, governments at all levels employ PerformanceStat: a focused effort by public executives to exploit the power of purpose and motivation, responsibility and discretion, data and meetings, analysis and learning, feedback and follow-up all to improve government's performance. Here, Harvard leadership and management guru Robert Behn analyzes the leadership behaviors at the core of PerformanceStat to identify how they work to produce results. He examines how the leaders of a variety of public organizations employ the strategy the way the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services uses its DPSSTATS to promote economic independence, how the City of New Orleans uses its BlightStat to eradicate blight in city neighborhoods, and what the Federal Emergency Management Agency does with its FEMAStat to ensure that the lessons from each crisis response, recovery, and mitigation are applied in the future. How best to harness the strategy's full capacity? The PerformanceStat Potential explains all."

New Zealand's deceptively simple but effective program to improve public services New Zealand has long been considered at the forefront of public administration, experimenting with new ways of organizing and delivering public services. Even so, successive New Zealand governments had mixed results from using traditional public management tools to lift the performance of the public service and address persistent problems that required multi-agency action. In 2012 the government decided to try something different. As part of a reform package called Better Public Services, the government challenged the public service to organize itself around achieving just ten results that had proven resistant to previous interventions. The plan was deceptively simple: set ambitious targets and publicly report on progress every six months; hold small groups of public managers collectively responsible; use lead indicators; and learn from both success and failure. This book explores how and why the New Zealand government made progress and how the program was able to create and sustain the commitment of public servants and unleash the creativity of public entrepreneurs. The authors combine case studies based on the experience of people involved in the change, together with public management research. They explain how ambitious targets and public accountability were used as levers to overcome the bureaucratic barriers that impeded public service delivery, and how data, evidence, and innovation were used to change practice. New Zealand experimented, failed, succeeded, and learned from the experience over five years. This New Zealand experience demonstrates that interagency performance targets are a potentially powerful tool for fostering better public services and thus improving social outcomes.

Choose Results is a deeply considered call to action to leaders committed to improving people's wellbeing. Grounded in the fields of action learning, collaborative thinking, and collective action, Choose Results elucidates the necessary but difficult task of collaborating with others in ways that align action, de-emphasize the personal, and leverage parallel lines of work with in-depth examples from boots-on-the-ground work. This book provides methods, worksheets, and templates to give leaders the tools and practices they need to work effectively with multiple stakeholders and partners across bureaucracies big and small. Raj Chawla has worked with hundreds of leaders who are interested in making a measurable difference in the quality of life in their communities. With a focus on practice and application, he connects leaders' inherent passion for making a difference to the discipline of using data to inform decisions and the sometimes humbling vulnerability needed to choose results.

Managing in the public sector requires an understanding of the interaction between three distinct dimensions—administrative structures, organizational cultures, and the skills of individual managers. Public managers must produce results that citizens and their representatives expect from their government while fulfilling their constitutional responsibilities. In Public Management: Thinking and Acting in Three Dimensions, authors Carolyn J. Hill and Laurence E. Lynn, Jr. argue that one-size-fits-all approaches are inadequate for dealing with the distinctive challenges that public managers face. Drawing on both theory and detailed case studies of actual practice, the authors show how public management that is based on applying a three-dimensional analytic framework—structure, culture, and craft—to specific management problems is the most effective way to improve the performance of America’s unique scheme of governance in accordance with the rule of law. The book educates readers to be informed citizens and prepares students to participate as professionals in the world of public management.

Over the past two decades public accountability has become not only an icon in political, managerial, and administrative discourse but also the object of much scholarly analysis across a broad range of social and administrative sciences. This handbook provides a state of the art overview of recent scholarship on public accountability. It collects, consolidates, and integrates an upsurge of inquiry currently scattered across many disciplines and subdisciplines. It provides a one-stop-shop on the subject, not only for academics who study accountability, but also for practitioners who are designing, adjusting, or struggling with mechanisms for accountable governance. Drawing on the best scholars in the field from around the world, The Oxford Handbook of Public Accountability showcases conceptual and normative as well as the empirical approaches in public accountability studies. In addition to giving an overview of scholarly research in a variety of disciplines, it takes stock of a wide range of accountability mechanisms and practices across the public, private and non-profit sectors, making this volume a must-have for both practitioners and scholars, both established and new to the field.

Tackling the key topics of reform and modernization, this important new book systematically examines performance in public management systems. The authors present this seminal subject in an informative and accessible manner, tackling some of the most important themes. Performance Management in the Public Sector takes as its point of departure a broad definition of performance to redefine major and basic mechanisms in public administration, both theoretically and in practice. The book: situates performance in some of the current public management debates; discusses the many definitions of ‘performance’ and how it has become one of the contested agendas of public management; examines measurement, incorporation and use of performance information; and explores the challenges and future directions of performance management. A must-read for any student or practitioner of public management, this core text will prove invaluable to anyone wanting to improve their understanding of performance management in the public sector.

A productive society is dependent upon high-performing government. This third edition of The Public Performance and Productivity Handbook includes chapters from leading scholars, consultants, and practitioners to explore all of the core elements of improvement. Completely revised and focused on best practice, the handbook comprehensively explores managing for high performance, measurement and analysis, costs and finances, human resources, and cutting-edge organizational tools. Its coverage of new and systematic management approaches and well-defined measurement systems provides guidance for organizations of all sizes to improve productivity and performance. The contributors discuss such topics as accountability, organizational effectiveness after budget cuts, the complementary roles of human capital and “big data,” and how to teach performance management in the classroom and in public organizations. The handbook is accompanied by an online companion volume providing examples of performance measurement and improvement manuals across a wide variety of public organizations. The Public Performance and Productivity Handbook, Third Edition, is required reading for all public administration practitioners, as well as for students and scholars interested in the state of the public performance and productivity field.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are widely used across organisations. But are they fully understood in how they can properly shape, improve, or even undermine organisational systems and outcomes? This book presents a framework and tools for measuring and managing performance at various levels within an organisation, and helps managers re-think the ways KPIs can be implemented to meet organisational goals. Innovative performance measurement and management is a vital function within any organisation irrespective of its size and industry. Measuring and managing performance (whether on an individual, team, or departmental basis) assists management in calibrating their established strategic goals by providing an insight into how well their employees and the organisation are doing and identifying areas of concern for rectification and improvement. This book focuses on the practicality of performance management tools (for example, Performance Analytics; Performance Reporting; Critical Success Factors; Balanced Scorecard; Benchmarking; Six Sigma; Business Excellence Models; Enterprise Risk Management) and illustrates their use, and the changing nature of how organisational performance will be evaluated in the future. This includes the application of Artificial Intelligence as an important trend in performance measurement and management. This book provides a universal framework for implementing a performance measurement and management system that is applicable to both the private and public sectors. It is particularly relevant to HR and operational managers, and organisational leaders and public administrators at all levels.