BENCHMARKING - MANAGEMENT APPROACH FOR PUBLIC SERVICES BASED ON PERFORMANCE CRITERIA

Objective assessment of the efficiency/effectiveness of an organization’s activity, based on realistic, measurable indicators, is a fundamental premise for successful strategic planning. Although traditionally associated with the business sector and the concept of economic productivity, benchmarking has become today an important tool used by public agencies in planning their activities and evaluating processes and outcomes. The public utility services sector is one of the fields that require the most a management approach based on performant and visionary benchmarking – as it is a field at the crossroads of public administration, business sector and direct client/customer relationship. With a public utility services sector experiencing different models of management – from open markets to still central dirigisme - and with an emerging market of public utility service of over 12 billion euros, Romania has not yet institutionalized a benchmarking system in the public utility sector, although several components are to be found today in specific legislation regulating the different services. The present paper argues the importance of using benchmarking tool in the public utility services sector, providing a piloting example from the water supply sector.