The state of performance management

Visa Paajanen/NAOF 4.10.2011

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Content

Performance management reform: goals

NAOF’s audit

Audit findings

Recommendations

Discussion

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Performance management reform

in the early 1990’s reform

amendments to budget legislation

goals:- improve efficiency- improve actors’ possibilities to achieve

outcomes by giving operational freedom- increase accountability by requiring

reporting on achievement of targets- decentralize decisionmaking in allocation

of resources

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NAOFs audit

critical or negative observations, nature of audit work

financial audit: time series of goal setting and reporting (but quality of goals or reports is not audited)

performance audit: - mainly focus in individual administrative sector or

agency- observations almost entirely apply to documents- but there are lot of audit findings and they

concentrate to the certain problems

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Audit findings, performance management

resource and normative steering still extensively used in state administration (performance management is just added to exixting system)

actors’ freedom to achieve results has not ingreased significantly

on the other hand: in many cases actors’ degree of success (rearing of responsibility) does not justify greater freedom

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Findigs, setting targets

mechanism for setting targets is unclear

productivity and economy are not steered and managed with performance targets (actually this means that performance management is not in use)

targets do not form a logical hierarchy

targets and resources are not linked to each other

targets are not measurable

policy effectiveness targets are not connected to time series

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Findigs, setting targets

targets are not real and challenging

no targets concerning operational efficiency or productivity and economy (lack of targets is not explained in management documents)

instead of targets agencies present income and expense information, person-years and cost information for different units

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Findings, accounting

the state of performance accounting is quite poor

monitoring systems for operational outputs are lacking or have shortcomings

problems especially in allocating work costs

”it appears that those who have management responsibility do not believe they need the information produced by accounting to extent that proper performance management would necessarily require”

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Findings, others

thit is unclear what consequences achieving or failing to achieve targets have for an organization

significance of incentives is small

performance management of tranferred funds is minimal

actors are not able to separate impacts of their own activities in complex field of causes and effects

evaluation of activities does not have adequate position

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Positive findings

performance management is development step to ensure the efficient and proper use of resources

public setting of targets and reporting on their achievement increases transparency of administration

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Recommendations

essential to motivate management and personnel (incentives)

Responsible for developing administration should strive to act so that there is positive need to display results in accountable way

performance management model should be adapted to meet the needs of different type of activities (maybe it is not possible to adapt everywhere)

Ministries should, with agencies and enterproses, reach a coherent, justified and documented view of (1) how targets should be set for performance as a whole, (2) considering different aspects of performance and (3) what information should be presented to give a true and fair picture of performance

the development of most important basic factor in performance management system, accounting, should be improved

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Summary

in the begining focus was in setting targets

in the begining ministries in relation to subordinate administration was viewed as critical factor

next decade attention was sifted more towards describing results to Parliament and accountability

next: back to target?

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Discussion

state of performance management in Turkey?

- has there been development in system?

- what are main problems at the moment?

- if you recognize problems, are there any easily adaptable improvements?

- who should be most active in solving these problems?