Citizen-driven government performance: involving citizens in measuring government performance

This volume contains eight essays which focus both on conceptual discussion of various issues relating to citizen-driven performance measurement and practical case studies. The main argument emerging from these essays is that citizen involvement in government performance measurement and improvement is necessary to ensure that what is measured is what matters to citizens and that the data are not corrupted by the natural desire of office-holders to report favourable outcomes. They also emphasise that involving citizens in the measurement of government performance is an important instrument to enhance citizens' trust in government. In the introduction to the volume, the editor notes that there are three main obstacles to citizen-driven government performance. They are: - citizen-driven governance requires long-term measures whereas the political decision makers often do not see beyond the short-term measures - many elected and appointed policy-level officials would prefer to defer expensive citizen-driven governance measures in order to take credit for low budgets during their terms of office - experts in citizen-driven performance measurement and improvement may not be skilled in communicating the products of those measures.