What performances, how to measure and who measures them, and for what purposes in the Public Administration system?

“Azienda Pubblica” Workshop. One of the main problems of public policy is that the related effects are not regularly measured. Another is that policies are often defined on simple assumptions that overlook the real behaviours which are determined inside public organisations and in their relationships with both enterprises and citizens. Quite frequently, for instance, public policies are excessively oriented toward financial equilibriums in each organization, regardless of the potential negative effects on both quantity and quality of service delivery. Undefined or unfeasible policies, as a result, often remain ineffective. In addition, the recent rules on the “accounting harmonization” in the public sector are mainly oriented toward a set of external public finance-based constraints on managing public organizations, enabling comparative analysis between institutions as well as countries, and defining formal responsibilities rather than characterizing the accounting system as a managerial tool to make key-actors accountable for the ratio between public service quantity and quality on the one side, and resource consumption on the other.

The VII “Azienda Pubblica” Workshop, organized by the University of Palermo (Italy), aims at evaluating both theoretical models and concrete experiences in which proper performance measures become a useful tool to design public policies, support decision-making processes by choosing among alternative scenarios, and monitor and assess results. Theoretical and empirical, as well as qualitative and quantitative, contributions to this topic are welcome. In particular, the focus is oriented to discuss and analyse the following critical issues: 1) Have public organisations adopted performance measurement systems? 2) How are the measures used for decision-making? 3) What are the main drivers related to the adoption, use, and effectiveness of performance management in public administration? 4) How do performance management systems affect the relationships between policy-makers, public managers, and external stakeholders? 5) In what circumstances do performance management systems predominantly have symbolic purposes? and 6) What is the future of performance management in public organisations?