Suchergebnisse

Is the market for prisons or prisoners? The question remains unresolved by the debate between Sue Vardon, former Director‐General, Department of Correctional Services, South Australia, and Patrick Weller, former Chairman, Corrective Services Commission, Queensland, in the March issue of this journal. Both asked whether prisoners are customers or clients of corrective service agencies. The distinction between clients as customers and clients as consumers in service delivery has important implications for the performance management of prisons, yet was ignored in the Vardon/Weller interchange. This distinction has implications for prisons and public services generally.

The Report on Government Services (RoGS) to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) is considered an exemplar of benchmarking in a federal system. Published annually since 1997, RoGS provides performance reporting in the form of cross jurisdictional benchmarking on an unprecedented scale and scope. This paper argues ROGS has institutionalised a national approach to performance measurement and reporting that is now at the centre of the COAG reform agenda. The paper examines the processes and institutional structures that explain how RoGS has transformed performance reporting for social infrastructure services. The final section provides a preliminary assessment of the impact of RoGS.

AbstractRobust indicators and measures for outputs and outcomes against agreed objectives are the holy grail of performance reporting. Transparent performance reporting can be a means to improving accountability to taxpayers for public funds and responsiveness to users. The Report on Government Services (RoGS) for the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) is widely seen as 'an exemplar of benchmarking in a federal system.' Twenty‐five years on, RoGS has been institutionalised and the approach to performance reporting was central to the COAG reform agenda. Annual reports compare the equity, effectiveness, and efficiency of outputs and outcomes across governments in six key areas – childcare, education and training; health; justice; emergency management; community services; and housing and homelessness. Performance indicators and measures have increased the accountability of state and territory governments for their management of public funds. The significance of RoGS is the unprecedented scale and scope of performance indicators and its longevity. The services benchmarked in the 25th report in 2020 accounted for $247 billion, representing 70% of government recurrent expenditure and 13% of GDP.