A Government without Good Management Is a House Builded on Sand

Blunt, Barrie

doi:10.2307/3380154

Cited by 1 publication

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“…I will provide contrary evidence later in this article. Other works addressing performance-measurement history provide even more cursory treatment of this period (Balk 1992;Miller 1990;Rich and Winn 1992;White 1999;Lynch and Day 1996;Nyhan and Marlow 1995) or are focused elsewhere (Arnold 1986;Blunt 1989;Conant 1986;Golembiewski 1989;Martin 1990). One must turn to general histories (Mosher 1968), to specific accounts of the bureaus of municipal research (Dahlberg 1966;Gill 1944;Haber 1964;Schachter 1997;Stivers 2000), or to the origins of the Brookings Institute (Critchlow 1985;Kahn 1997) to find more in-depth discussion, and these do not point out the significance of the performance-and productivity-measurement activities.…”

Section: Daniel W Williamsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring Government in the Early Twentieth Century

Williams

2003

Public Administration Review

133

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This article discusses the early history of performance and productivity measurement. It finds sophisticated development of these tools beginning in the first decade of the twentieth century, primarily at the New York Bureau of Municipal Research. These practices grew out of accounting, the social survey, work records, and municipal statistics. The bureau built government's capacity to measure. They advocated such basic empirical practices as making observations at all, doing so systematically and routinely, and recording data at the time of observation. By 1912, performance measurement exhibited many of the features associated with the modern practice: measuring of input, output, and results; attempting to make government more productive; making reports comparable among communities; and focusing on allocation and accountability. Performance measurement was developed in the context of shifting power between the elected executive and the legislature.

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