Research On American Performance Budget Reform: Effect, Factor And Enlightenment

In the1980s, with the rise of New Public Management Reform, Public Budget System also experienced a great change. In order to optimize the allocation of public resources and improve the efficiency of the government’s management, as the representative of the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, OECD countries firstly established the institutional framework and operational mechanism of’Performance Budgeting’. From then on, the theory and practice of Performance Budgeting is in deep development.’Performance Budgeting’ is a budget model, which links the allocation of resources and evaluated results. It realizes the supervision of the budget process and the efficiency of the use of public resources by establishing strategic objectives, appropriating funds by target workload, and measuring performance indicators and the target completion.The validity of Performance Budgeting can be viewed from the ’Process Dimension’ and ’Decision Dimension’. The ’Process Dimension’ merely stresses that the performance information should play an important role in the process of public budget, while the ’Decision Dimension’ then requirements the budget decision-making must depends entirely on the performance results. From the Performance Budgeting of the United States in the federal, states and local government point of view, Performance Budgeting in the’Process Dimension’ is valid, while in the’Decision Dimension’ is relatively ineffective. It is effective because relevant comprehensive law system has been established in the United States in the system and procedures for the implementation of the performance budget escort, and the effective performance evaluation frameworks and tools also help to give full play and the use of performance information. While it is relatively ineffective is because of a variety of reasons, including political factors, cultural factors, and the inflexible expenditure structure of United States.The validity of Performance Budgeting in the ’Process Dimension’ and the invalidity application of it in the ’Decision Dimension’ finally cause the consideration on the Positioning of Performance Budgeting Reform. The nature of the public budget is political and conflict. By its very nature, Performance Budgeting will be successful if positioned as a ’management tool’ and ’decision-making reference’ tool when it is applied to the political process. However, If we blindly position it as a ’decision-making tool’ in order to change the existing political process, it will doomed to fail.The evaluation of the effect of Performance Budget Reform, the analysis and rational positioning of it has brought a lot of inspiration to the budget reform in China. China’s budget management system is of great difference with the United States in the budget structure and budget process. Therefore, we should sit on our national conditions to learn from the successful experience of United States to resolve the common problems in Performance Budget Reform. The suggestions are as follows:To improve the integrity of the legal system, to build on the performance evaluation system, to train the professionals, to sort out the relationship between the performance and the budget, as well as to manage the expectations of Performance Budgeting.