Results-based management has become an important tool for public management, whose main characteristic is to generate better public policies, based on efficient and effective methods of planning, budgeting, project management, monitoring and evaluation. The purpose of this study was to analyze results-based management and modernization of local governments. It was based on a qualitative approach, following a narrative theoretical perspective, under the criteria of origin, language and temporality of the bibliographic compilation. The main search engines such as Scielo, Latindex, Dialnet and Scopus were used to select 15 publications referring to the keywords related to management by results and modernization. Thus, concluding that implementing such management and modernization within local governments is essential to achieve the goals of each of the institutions, which contributes to improving quality, in addition to being efficient and effective in the execution of their work.