17. MEASURING AND MANAGING FOR PERFORMANCE: LESSONS FROM AUSTRALIA

Many Australasian-Anglo-American jurisdictions including Queensland, other Australian states, the Australian Commonwealth, central government in Britain, the U.S., Canada and New Zealand ( Department of Finance and Administration, 2000 ; NZ Treasury/State Services Commission, 2002 ; Queensland Treasury, 1997 ; Treasury Board of Canada, 2000 ), are presently debating over “managing for outcomes.” Throughout this chapter, the acronym MFO is used to stand for this whole movement even though it implies greater coherence than exists. There is a definite movement in this direction in Australasian public services with the emergence of widespread rethinking about its purposes and characteristics. It is driven in some jurisdictions by ministers wanting to know about actual policy outcomes and less about the shiny-chrome management systems behind them and, in other jurisdictions, by senior managers in central agencies and some line agencies who are rediscovering the real purposes constituting public management. There is also some back-pedaling in relation to some aspects of the economic reform agenda that was applied too hard during the late 1980s and 1990s in this part of the world. There are also some that claim that MFO is a logical extension of the first stage of reform undertaken during the 1980s and 1990s – one in which outputs rather than outcomes was the primary focus.