Performance Assessing On Government Provision Of Public Goods: Principle And Application

Government is an important body on resources allocating, whose performance on its functions will affect public benefit and social welfare directly. This dissertation tried to construct a perfect logical framework to assess performance on government provision of public goods and services (GPPG), on the base of Public Economics and Public Management. Beginning from analysis on limitation of classical theory of performance assessing (PA), it sets a complete logic framework for it, extending its research field largely and deeply, enhancing its explanatory power. Meanwhile, PA is highly regarded as a powerful tool to correct government failures in this paper on pursuing a more effective government.The whole paper is composed of seven chapters.Chapter 1 is introduction. GPPG can be regarded as a kind of high abstraction of government's functions, whose performance is defined as the efficiency and effectiveness on such provision under current resources and technology. The classical theory on PA has inherent limitations, which has blocked its covering on new development of related theories and practices, what scholars in Public Management have done can repair without eradicating it. So it is necessary to absorb nutrition from other discipline such as Public Economics to extend and update it. PA has been developed to a kind of revolution in the field of public management from 1990s, and is spreading to every corner in our country today, producing strong desire on its theory and methods. The scope of this research is equal to government PA after excluding its provision on private goods and services, and larger than that on public expenditure.Chapter 2 is reviews on literatures.Chapter 3 is logical model of PA on GPPG. Basing on classical Input-Output-Outcome (IOO) model, public desire, public choice, public policy-making, authorization & supervising and resources collecting are supplemented to its front, and government continuance is added to the rear, then a new model, PCDR-IOO model is generated, which covers the whole process of GPPG. Originated from public desire, such a process will go through three stages- provision preparation, materialization and consumption of PG, concluding twelve links. Relationships among links are complex. Assessing performance of these links consists of the breadth of PA, which can be maximized as possible set of measures (PSOM). This model enables PA not only works horizontally on three dimensions-capacity, efficiency and effectiveness assessing on GPPG respectively, but also on micro, medium and macro longitudinally. Among these dimensions, capacity assessing is foundation and premise;efficiency and effectiveness are main body of PA, which is briefed as "Double E" Assessing. Efficiency is emphasized on process assessing, and effectiveness is highlighted on result measuring. A criterion that should be insisted is that effectiveness is lead, while efficiency is assistance.The demand for performance information (PI) from government, the public, legislature, etc. produces prime power for PA; Created by various PA, PI reproduces new and stronger demand for more PI after previous demand has been satisfied. Two kinds of power from demand and supply for PI are equal and opposite in direction, which form a demand-supply-spiral (DSS) of PI by their interaction and mutual strengthening. This is what empowering consecutive PA activities. PA is functioning on information provisions, serving government in its decision-making, management, supervising and communicating, which enhances its credibility and keep its position.Chapter 4 expounds on support for PA on GPPG in perspective of Public Economics and Public Management. (1) Public desire is public, inseparable, equal, hierarchy, infinite, local and dynamic. The hierarchy determines the logical order of GPPG, and the infinity means its satisfactory must be subject to realities. The Effective Public Demand (EPD) is what can be satisfied under current recourses and technology. The matching of supply and demand for PG is the top standard to measure its performance.(2) The relationship between government and citizen are dual:political agency determines the necessity to assess the government and open its result; fiscal exchange means it's the right of taxpayers and the duty of the government to measure and open PI. Government failures are representing as decision failure, imbalance of governance structure, improper on quantity, quality and structure of PG, and malpractice of public officials and servants. These failures are caused by self-benefiting motive of rational man, information asymmetry and the separation of costing and benefit sharing of PG. Provision of PI is helpful to reduce such failures, such as to improve public management, and policy-making, and to accelerate the process of performance-based budget reform.Different modes of pubic management require different content of PA. Traditional Public Administration is characterized by bureaucracy and hierarchy. It pursued compliance, with little motive for performance, although it has shown some desire for administrative efficiency after Scientific Management. NPM fired at rigidify and inefficiency of Public Administration, setting the government as steering instead of paddling, insisting customer-oriented performance idea, building quality standard on public service, putting the PA forward to "double E" phase. New Public Service (NPS) regards people as the first, and the government should be serving the citizens (not only customers) beyond steering, air for public interest, and pursuing efficiency and effectiveness both. PCDR-IOO model matches people-first idea of NPS, integrating it to its assessing system, and setting it as origin and core criterion.Chapter 5 materialized the PCDR-IOO model as PA system of GPPG. Such a system is composed by measuring preparation, measures and methods. The preparation means to build a kind of performance environment and culture, to win support from high leaders; then GPPG will be divided to layers of subdivision and transformed to duties of them, which make them clear on performance planning and target setting. In addition, performance standard should be set for every kind of PG. Performance measures are core of the system. The scope to access cannot be only determined according assessing purpose in PSOM, but also can be set key performance indicators (KPI) in accordance with management purpose. SMART are guiding principles when measures are to be selected. Popular measure system is composed of effectiveness, efficiency, belongings variable, workload and other typology. Methods available to assess measures are as following:cost-benefit analysis, unit cost, DEA, balance scorecard and so on.Chapter 6 has selected classic international cases for study from micro and macro perspective after summing up PA reform history of three developed countries. On micro level, program measurement is focused on that in the US and Australia. Performance Revolution in the US has experienced trilogy from Clinton, Bush till Obama administration, "Double E" become pursuit instead of single efficiency gradually. Created by Bush administration, Performance Assessing and rating Toll (PART) has become model for many countries. In Australia, "Economy" in 3Es has been substituted by "Equity", so it is called "Australian 3Es", which are guiding principles on assessing. "Double E" and highlighted use of PI in management and decision-making are features of PA in Australia. Public Service Agreements (PSAs) in UK and Atlanta Dashboard has been selected as cases at medium level. PSAs extended IOO by adding resources limit, are composed of performance agreements among Treasury and departments on various public services provision. Dashboard is a model of compatibility for PA and hierarchy administration, it gained balance well on independence of micro management of government and transparency of PI. Main experience and lessens from developed countries are summarized at the end of this chapter.Chapter 7 is composed of China's practice and positive analysis. China's PA practice on GPPG began in local governments, and is blooming everywhere today; the Central Government has paid highly attention and expectation on it. Competitive distribution on budgetary authority in Guangdong is a successful case of PA on Input. Demand survey for Taxpaying Service (TS) represents a beginning of PCDR-IOO model's application in this field, which was designed by the author and peers. Another concurrent survey on satisfaction of TS produces some useful advices to improve local TS. Program performance assessing in Central departments is a copy of PART, so the two versions of PART are compared in this paper. Insufficiency in the phase of assessing preparation is regarded as fundamental limitation for its progress. The current main challenges on PA system in China are listed as weak performance idea, imperfection of PA system, shortage of assessing workforce, there is neither law or regulation to abide by, nor transparency on PI, which caused various difficulties for assessing management and communication of PI.PCDR-IOO model is applied horizontally to measure the performance of local governments in Shandong province on local PG provision. Measures are designed before assessing. The results are as following:Difference on potential of local PG provision derives from GDP, with a coefficient of variation (CV) valued 0.51, which causes a larger gap on tax burden, kept above 0.6 continuously, and they both contribute to a larger gap between CV of provision capacity and that of the provision effort, a gap more than twice of the latter.Assessing on effectiveness of PG provision is divided into three branches:Scale performance of PG provision. GDP, peasants' net revenue and tax burden is affecting demand for education, agriculture investment, normal government services and public security positively; so do density of population on public security. Affection of tax burden on these demands verifies the characteristic of provision-oriented and coerciveness on consumption of these PG. On matching degree, compulsory education is ranking first (86%), and agriculture investing and public security is ranking lowest (82%).Structure performance of PG provision. According data from 2008 and 2011 rural survey on PG provision, tap-water has covered 89% rural areas in 17 cities, finishing planned target in advance; rural road provision has realized "Every village", however, greening, bighting and clearing of roads in villages are far from satisfaction, and there are serious potential safety hazard on these roads. Rural bus service has met peasants' demand in the main, power and compulsory education provision has gained high performance, per -educated-year meet 9. However, there is larger gap between provision and demand for pre-school education.Distribution performance:Fiscal resources are transferring from rich areas to poor ones in years, which contribute to increasing of peasant's income, narrowing difference among areas and leveling their consumption. Qingdao and Heze are ranking at top of flow-out and flow-in areas respectively.Efficiency measuring:six kinds of PG-education, medical treatment, agriculture facilities, infrastructure, environment protection and social security-in 17 areas are measured by DEA method. Among them, efficiency on education wins the top score 0.86. with a lowest CV;and environment protection is ranking at the end with a largest CV.At the end of the paper, four pieces of advices are suggested for establishment of PA on GPPG in China. Advices such as to foster the building of infrastructure of PA, to perfect the PA system gradually, to formulate related laws and regulations, and management of PI, are detailed.On research methods, this paper has integrates methods such as normal and positive analysis, case study, literature survey and field survey, communicating with peers in and abroad, and generated such a comprehensive outcome.This dissertation has tried all its effort to give some new ideas as following:To extend traditional 100 model on PA to PCDR-IOO model, describing a kind of PA system with three dimensions horizontally and three layers longitudinally, summarizing the emphasis of PA as "Double E" assessing.To propose "Effective Public Demand" as a new concept and value public desire as origin of PA system, setting the matching of supply and demand as core standard of PA, so much so that to place the people-first idea of NPS on the center of performance ideas.To demonstrate that PA is being empowered by self-strengthening demand-supply-spiral of PI.To suggest to pay more attention on research of consumption of PG in Public Economics.To open the door on PA of Taxpaying Service in our country by surveys on demand and satisfaction for TS.To create model-based PA system on local GPPG, and finish three dimensions' real assessing with detailed data.