Publication: Improving Performance : Foundations of Systemic Performance
Loading...
Published
2010-02
ISSN
Date
2012-08-13
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
At its heart, a performance orientation in the public sector is a predisposition to make promises and an ability to deliver them. Some of the key ideas behind this are: 1) responsiveness - reducing the time lag between changed political priorities and corresponding public policy actions; 2) measurement - the quantification of outputs (and occasionally outcomes); 3) managerialism - the relaxation of the enforced consistency in procedures to move towards flexibility with accountability in order to improve efficiency. It is often seen purely as an import from the private sector, but in fact there have always been areas of managerialism within the public sector. Using these ideas, this note describes some of the key technical foundations necessary for moving towards a performance orientation and outlines a pragmatic approach for improving performance, highlighting the part played by changing performance arrangements for senior management.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Manning, Nick. 2010. Improving Performance : Foundations of Systemic Performance. Global Expert Team (GET) Brief. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/10508 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Implementing Results Based Management in Thailand(Washington, DC, 2011-01)Thailand has been pursuing the implementation of results based management techniques in the public sector for over a decade. Leading this task is the Office of the Public Sector Development Commission (OPDC) which has been supporting various agencies and departments in undertaking a wide variety of results based management reforms, including key performance indicators, balanced scorecards, and individual performance bonuses, among others. This report summarizes the results of a two week fact finding mission and a one day workshop conducted by the Office of the Public Sector Development Commission (OPDC) of the Prime Minister's office in collaboration with the World Bank's Public Sector Performance Global Expert Team (PSP-GET) held on September 24, 2010 in Bangkok, Thailand. This report covers the main areas to consider in implementing a results based management system. The report provides an overview of Thailand's Results Based Management (RBM) system, with an emphasis on lessons from international experience in leveraging performance information to deliver results. Chapters on how to link performance with planning and budgeting, as well as an overview of incentives to improve performance are included. Each chapter is loosely structured in the following way: issues identified during discussions; relevant lessons from international experiences; and overall recommendations and findings of the PSP-GET.Publication Measuring Governance and Service Delivery in Safety Net Programs(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-09)This paper develops a framework to assess organizational performance in the delivery of social safety nets. Specifically, it provides guidance to task teams and program managers for identifying indicators of governance and service quality in targeted cash transfer programs. The paper identifies governance issues along the results chain of service delivery and suggests policy and performance indicators for assessing program inputs, human resources, financing and resource management; and program activities, operational procedures, Management Information Systems (MIS) and control. It also suggests indicators of organizational performance and the quality of outputs, including demand-side accountability mechanisms.Publication Afghanistan Public Expenditure Review 2010 : Second Generation of Public Expenditure Reforms(World Bank, 2010-04-01)Afghanistan and its donor community face a dilemma that is critical to the country's sustained development: how to channel more foreign assistance through the government's budgetary system (i.e., core budget) in the face of a huge capacity gap to ensure effective administration of such expenditures. Without more money on budget, national objectives such as poverty reduction and the building of a stable state cannot be fully realized. Currently, 90 percent of the national budget' is externally financed. Overall aid in 2008-09 amounted to US$5.5 billion or 47 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The critical issue, however, is not so much the amount of aid, but weaknesses in its mode of delivery and impact. Three quarters of the aid bypasses the government's own budget system, moving through what is known as the 'external budget'. This dual budgetary system means that most economic activity in Afghanistan takes place outside the government's fiscal control, thus undermining the government's legitimacy and relevance to the Afghan people and weakening the budget's primacy as the tool of national policy. The aid needs to be on-budget and aligned with Afghan priorities. If the success of aid can be gauged by the extent to which it enables a recipient country to free itself of the need for that aid, then the Afghanistan foreign assistance program, as currently structured, is failing its mission. Afghanistan's fiscal sustainability, after having risen to a plateau in recent years, regressed in 2008-09 due to rising operating expenditures, mainly for security, and the country remains one of the world's most aid-dependent.Publication Insider Insights(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008)Colombia's National Results-Based Management and Evaluation System (SINERGIA) is one of Latin America's outstanding results-based monitoring and evaluation initiatives. With 15 years of progressive development, SINERGIA has endured the countries' institutional, political, and fiscal problems and has attained one of the highest levels of development and customization in Latin America. Based on its accomplishments it has been held up as an example by multilateral organizations, donor agencies, and other governments. This paper examines the experience of institutionalizing Colombia's monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system, from the perspective of a former SINERGIA manager: Manuel Fernando Castro, Director of Public Policy Evaluation, and Department of National Planning. This study is meant to complement previous studies by other authors with an insider's account, description, and analysis of the obstacles encountered and the results obtained. Likewise, it presents recommendations on how to ensure further institutionalization and identifies several lessons that might be of interest to professionals who are developing evaluation systems in other countries.Publication Evaluation of Government Performance and Public Policies in Spain(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2010-05)This paper covers selective aspects of Spain's experience in evaluating government performance and public policies. Rather than a cohesive evaluation system, there is instead a constellation of organizations, with evaluation mandates and/or practices, which are not interrelated. These organizations and their respective practices have been evolving without coordination over the past three decades. An evaluation culture is slowly emerging, amid different conceptual approaches used by different organizations that are managing and/or conducting evaluations. Evaluation activity has been taking place in Spain for years, with a marked acceleration and qualitative shift since 2005. Despite Spain's standing as an Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country as well as a European Union (EU) country, it still has not developed a consolidated evaluation system. This fact points out how long-term and complex is the task of institutionalizing an evaluation system. Finally, this paper contains several website addresses where readers can obtain additional information on aspects of the paper that most interest them and to follow the Spanish experience as it unfolds.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics--Europe 2006 : Securing Development in an Unstable World(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006)The Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE) is one of the world's best-known series of conferences for the presentation and discussion of new knowledge on development. It is an opportunity for many of the world's finest development thinkers to present their ideas. In 1999, in recognition of Europe's pivotal role in the provision of development assistance and to bring the World Bank's research on development into close contact with European perspectives, the World Bank created a distinctively European platform for debate on development issues. The seventh Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics in Europe was held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, May 23-24, 2005. The conference was co-organized by the Government of the Netherlands. The theme of the conference was "Securing Development in an Unstable World." The conference opened with remarks by Jean-François Rischard, the World Bank's Vice President for Europe, and Agnes van Ardenne-van der Hoeven, Minister for Development Cooperation, the Netherlands. Their remarks were followed by keynote addresses by François Bourguignon, Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank; Hisashi Owada, Judge, International Court of Justice, and former Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs, Japan; Gerrit Zalm, Minister of Finance, the Netherlands; and Ernesto Zedillo, former President of Mexico, and Director, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, Yale University. Three papers-on macroeconomic vulnerability; vulnerability: a micro perspective; and health risks-were then presented.Publication Africa’s Pulse, No. 32, October 2025: Pathways to Job Creation in Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-10-07)Economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to increase from 3.5 percent in 2024 to 3.8 percent in 2025 and accelerate further to an annual average rate of 4.4 percent in 2026–27. Improved terms of trade are helping to stabilize local currencies, but real income per capita is only set to rise slightly, leaving extreme poverty largely unchallenged. By 2050, the region is projected to have over 620 million more working-age individuals. This demographic shift calls for innovative and transformative approaches to job creation, as current growth doesn't significantly lead to wage employment. To tackle these issues, foundational infrastructure and skills, a favorable business environment, and good governance are essential. Addressing the constraints to the private sector development opens the door for productive sectors of the economy to grow and generate quality employment, including but not limited to agribusiness, tourism, and healthcare, among others. With the right approach, Sub-Saharan Africa can establish a vibrant job market. This would help meet the needs of its growing labor force.Publication FY 2025 China Country Opinion Survey Report(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-08-04)The Country Opinion Survey in China assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in better understanding how stakeholders in China perceive the WBG. It provides the WBG with systematic feedback from national and local governments, multilateral/bilateral agencies, media, academia, the private sector, and civil society in China on 1) their views regarding the general environment in China; 2) their overall attitudes toward the WBG in China; 3) overall impressions of the WBG’s effectiveness and results, knowledge work and activities, and communication and information sharing in China; and 4) their perceptions of the WBG’s future role in China.Publication Africa's Pulse, No. 30, October 2024: Transforming Education for Inclusive Growth(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-14)Sub-Saharan Africa's growth recovery has resumed. Economic activity in the region is projected to grow by 3.0 percent in 2024, after bottoming out at 2.4 percent in 2023. Private consumption and investment contributions have supported the growth recovery in 2024. Growth is expected to accelerate further to 4 percent in 2025-26. However, the outlook remains uncertain despite falling global inflation and resilient global activity supporting growth in the region. Sub-Saharan Africa needs to further accelerate growth to reduce extreme poverty and enhance prosperity. GDP per capita is projected to grow by 0.5 percent in 2024 and 1.4 percent in 2025, but this expected increase would still leave the region's living standards below their level in 2014. Macroeconomic stability and human capital investments needed to achieve inclusive growth and transform the education system are vital for the region. Efforts should focus on equipping children with basic skills and providing the youth and workforce with higher-order skills. Increasing investment in education, efficient spending, and collaboration with local partners are needed to achieve universal education by 2030. Addressing these challenges will require a strong policy response to bridge the spending gap and meet education goals.