The Framework Of Government Performance Evaluation

Since the middle 1970s, government performance evaluation has spread all over the world with the rise of the new public management in the world. Developed countries, such as British, New Zealand, Australia and United States, have actively embarked on government performance evaluation and accumulated a wealth of experience. On the contrary, although our country has made great efforts in this field in recent years, there still remain many problems in both institutionalisation and practice. For instances, the performance measurement is not properly designed and the related practices are missing the critical legal support. The lack of theoretical guidance results in the lack of basic conceptual understanding of the government performance evaluation by both evaluators and those being evaluated, leading to an uncertainty in evaluation process and results. In view of such essential deficiency, this paper builds on the theory of public accountability of the government, and systematically examines the theory basis, subject, target, object, information base, and results in applying government performance evaluation. The goal is to build up the theory framework of government performance evaluation, providing guidance for evaluation practices.Public accountability is the foundation of government performance evaluation. Public accountability is an obligation held by the government, public organizations and their staff to fulfill public affairs' management function and to report to the public. There are multiple layers of public accountability, and all the layers can ultimately trace their root to the principal-agent relationship between the public and the government. Public accountability is not only the driving force behind the government performance evaluation, but it is also its core content. The connotations of public accountability in a specific environment will greatly impact on every aspect of government performance evaluation.Within the framework of government performance evaluation, "evaluator" is the layer of the public accountability that makes the evaluation, and the "evaluatee" is the layer being evaluated. A single layer of the public accountability can play the role of either evaluator or evaluatee or both. Within the principal-agent relationship, the evaluator is the principal, and the evaluatee is the agent. In practice, the assignment of the "evaluator" is dependent on the characteristics of the public, nongovernmental intermediary organizations and other factors. The identification of an "evaluatee" should factor into the consideration of a departments' function, level, evaluation cost, etc. Given the public accountability relationship chain in china and considering the success of government performance evaluation in the western society, we should include in the evaluator pool the evaluatee, superiors, the legislature, the public, academics and other society organizations. Therefore, at present, we should establish the evaluator position of national people's congress, improve the public involvement in the government performance evaluation, and encourage independent nonprofit institutions to play greater role in the evaluation process. As for the evaluatee, the government, government department and their staff should all be included. These three evaluatees differ greatly from each other in terms of evaluation objective, process and measurement system. This paper focuses the discussion of performance evaluation on the regional government.Evaluation object is also an important component within the government performance evaluation framework, and it contains two levels: (1) value orientation, which is the fundamental conception and measurement standards of government performance evaluation; (2) specific measurement indicators, which are external manifestations of value orientation. According to the requirement of public accountability, the primary value orientation of Chinese prime government performance evaluation is to safeguard and enhance public interests, and it consists of four aspects: growth, equity, democracy and stability. Based on these value orientations and successful experience of western countries, this paper builds up the theoretical framework for the measurement system of Chinese prime government performance evaluation, and develops measurement instrument through the questionnaire survey. After screening the measurement indicators, this paper provides a performance evaluation measurement system of prime government tailored to our countries' actual environment.Disclosure of government information, financial or non-financial, is necessary for successful implementation of government performance evaluation. Therefore, this paper specifically discusses the information disclosure of government performance evaluation. At present, there are still many deficiencies in the disclosure of either financial or non-financial information, unable to cater to the needs of diversified evaluator pool of government performance evaluation. Therefore, our country should reform current budgetary accounting system and establish government accounting and financial reporting system so as to provide government financial information to various information users. In addition, government information disclosure need to be further enhanced so that the public can obtain timely, comprehensive and objective information regarding government performance.The disclosure and use of evaluation results is an important part of government performance evaluation. Relevant evaluation results must be provided to stakeholders to help them to make various decisions related to government performance evaluation. Given different evaluation goals, China should strengthen internal and external disclosure of evaluation results, and make use of the evaluation results to improve government's internal efficiency and its public accountability.