Probe Into The "Rayner Scrutiny Programme" Of Britain

From the 70's of 20 century, the traditional system of administration doesn't keep pace with the time, because of the severe economic recession and the coming of globalization, information age, market-orientation and knowledge economy. The movement of New Public Administration came into being with this innovation, and it started a wave of reform all around the world. It took business management theories, methods, and skills instead of the traditional public administration ideas. It introduced the market competitive mechanisms, and based on the market and customers orientation. It put performance management into practice, and upgraded the public managerial standards and quality of public service. The idea of the New Public Management became the concept of the government reform. It made the scientific definition, measure and evaluation of the government performance as the general consensus. This movement not only changed the concept, but also promoted the system and methods of western public management. To some degree, it improved the public management, and boosted economic and social development, and strengthened the power of the nation.As a main country of this wave, Britain was pubic considered as the pioneer of the government reform. She was the first country to carry out the performance management, and finally became the leading force of this movement. The wide range and all-sidedness of the reform were its main features. In order to improve the efficiency of government, Mrs. Thatcher was the first to set up the"Rayner Scrutiny Programme"after she was in office in 1979.The target of this scrutiny was to evaluate every department's performance, and to find out the problems in the work, and then gave some advise to improve the government efficiency. As a new management practice and skill, the government performance had drawn wide attention, and run through the whole administrative reform in the New Public Management Movement. The Rayner Scrutiny Programme played an important role in the reform, not only because it was the beginning of the movement, but also because as a means of overcame bureaucracy, it improved effectiveness and efficiency of government. The guiding principle influenced the whole new period of British New Public Management Movement; and all the other countries therefore followed this example. After entering WTO, it is also substantial to do a research on this period for China, which is in the revolution.In this paper, the author concerned with"Rayner Scrutiny Programme", such as its background, contents, influence, status and the author's consideration from the scrutiny. The purpose of this paper is to probe into the essence of"Rayner Scrutiny Programme"and assimilate it for us.There are four parts in this paper.The first part is to introduce the background of Rayner Scrutiny Programme. This part is mainly from the angle of New Public Management to introduce the background of Rayner Scrutiny Programme, and discusses the government managerial situation and crisis under the traditional administrative pattern of Britain. This is the important reason why the Rayner Scrutiny Programme launched.The second part is about the main content of Rayner Scrutiny Programme. It includes the general situation, characters and progress of the scrutiny. The author took some examples in this part in order to figure out the real Rayner Scrutiny Programme.The third part is about the evaluation and influence of Rayner Scrutiny Programme. The attitude towards the internal and external of British government; towards the results and effects of Rayner Scrutiny Programme are different. This part will sum up these ideas from affirmative part and negative part.This last part draws lessons from the Rayner Scrutiny Programme for China. To explore some deep meanings of the scrutiny after elucidated it, in hope of promoting the Chinese government to be an industrious, incorruptible, effective and practical government.