Comparative performance assessments of local public services matter. Governments and communities need to know whether services are effective and efficient, and whether they are operating in the interests of their users. But the marketisation and associated fragmentation of responsibility for delivery has left governments reaching for ‘long distance mechanisms of control’ to exert oversight over increasingly complex networks of providers. As a result, recent years have witnessed an unprecedented increase in the scale, scope and significance of external assessment of public services. The UK has been at the forefront but this is a transnational phenomenon with profound implications for management practices around the globe. Performance assessment and benchmarking have also attracted strong interest in federal systems such as Australia and Canada.
Initial expressions of interest and/or outlines or abstracts are invited on this theme either for main articles (up to 5250 words) or ‘new development’ pieces (up to 2750 words). They should be sent to both Professor Alan Fenna (
A.Fenna@exchange.curtin.edu.au) and Dr Clive Grace (
clivegrace@hotmail.com) by 30 June 2012. Responses will be sent by 31 July 2012, with completed pieces due 1 November 2012. Generally, see:
http://www.cipfa.org.uk/pt/pmm/submissions.cfmWe seek contributions which are comparative, or which highlight broad issues or lessons. We are interested in the impact of benchmarking, problems of data quality and validity, governance, its relationship to improvement, issues of communication and of citizen efficacy, and the dimensions of benchmarking and the drivers which determine its shape and use.
This PMM issue will draw on a joint ESRC and the Forum of Federations funded programme on international public services benchmarking involving international conferences and seminars and the creation of an associated network of practitioners and academics.
