Research On Performance Evaluation Systems Of Jiaxing Municipal Government Departments

Performance evaluation is a major management tool for scientifically evaluating the achievements of government departments and improving their overall performances. The developed Western countries, performing a leading role in performance evaluation practices, have introduced government department performance evaluation early in the 1970 s and generated abundant theories in this field. The local governments in China started to adopt performance evaluation in the 1990 s and formed a lot of performance evaluation modes with local characteristics over the past 20years’ researches and practices. In recent years, the city of Jiaxing has gained more progresses by conducting useful explorations in performance evaluation for municipal government departments.This paper takes management by objectives theory, Model Administration Theory and Principal-agent Theory as its theory basis and employs research methods including document study, interview and comparative analysis to make the study of the typical Jiaxing municipalgovernment department performance evaluation system—the establishment of “Five Orientations”(i.e. study orientation, innovation orientation, clear government orientation, service orientation and efficiency orientation) Government Organs evaluation system. Jiaxing municipal government department performance evaluation has its characteristics such as comparatively complete evaluation index systems,diversified evaluation bodies, various performance evaluation methods and an initially established performance evaluation rewards and punishment mechanism. However, there are still shortcomings from an overall perspective of view such as the insufficiency of legal and system guarantees for performance evaluation, the evaluation index system is not scientifically designed, and the evaluation body is mainly the government departments while lacks of public evaluations, a low transparency of the performance evaluation information, the evolution results are not well used, and all these above mentioned have restricted the scientificity and efficiency of performance evolution. This paper takes the successful practices of Britain and the US and the city of Shenzhen as well as Siming Mode from Fujian province for reference and provides suggestions and advices for the improvement of Jiaxing municipal government departments performance evaluation from such aspects including enhancement of performance evaluation system authoritative construction, establishment of scientific performance evaluation system indexes, reinforcement of performance evaluation information transparency, improvement of evaluation body’s diversification as well as effectiveness in using the evaluation results.This paper has six parts. The first part is Introduction and introduces the background information and meaning of choosing this topic, thecurrent situation and methods of research and study home and abroad.The second part is the theory analysis of government department performance evaluation which explains the connotation of government departments and performance evaluation, structure and function of performance evaluation system and the performance evaluation theories.The third part the current situation analysis of Jiaxing municipal government departments that analyzes the development of Jiaxing municipal government departments, the organization and implementation work, the index system and the evaluation characteristics of “Five Orientations” Government Organs Evaluation and its problems. The fourth part is the study of government department performance evaluation practices home and abroad for reference and analyzes the government performance evaluation practices of Britain and the US and the city of Shenzhen as well as Siming Mode from Fujian province. The fifth part gives advices to Jiaxing municipal government department performance evaluation system and raises suggestions to the problems found during the performance evaluation process. The sixth part goes to the conclusion and expectation of this research with research results and further study fields and areas provided.