摘要：Performance measurement as a tool of public management has a long history. Its primary goal has always been account-ability¡ªto legislative bodies, taxpayers, and program stake-holders. But the direction and purpose of performance mea-surement have been changing. Formerly, it was most intensely focused on financial performance or efficiency. The initiatives encapsulated in "planning, programming, and budgeting," "management by objectives," "zero-based bud-geting," and other popular buzzwords of the 1960s and 1970s were concerned primarily with the relationship of inputs to costs and the value of cost-reduction activities. In the last two decades, performance measurement has entered a much wider arena. It has come to be seen as an important tool for improving the quality of an agency's services and the consequences for those served
