Results-oriented are government programs that focus on performance in exchange for granting greater discretionary decision-making power to managers. Within an economic and political framework of scarce resources and down-sizing, making optimum use of public resources is a primary concern of all public managers. The productivity of government programs has taken on increasing importance in the last thirty years.

Links between productivity and other aspects of management—such as budgeting, goal setting, and strategic planning—also have been stressed. A brief look at key elements of productivity will indicate where scholarly observers and others have placed the most emphasis. Productivity and efforts to achieve it are lineal descendants of concern for scientific management and efficiency in government, yet they encompass a broader range of concerns and goals.

Productivity focuses on both efficient use of governmental resources and actual impacts of what government does. The task is made more difficult by the fact that measures available to public managers for effectively monitoring programs are often less precise and can be continuously subjected to ideological reinterpretation. Complicated citizen-government interactions— such as applying for unemployment compensation or a business license—are now transacted online or via the U.S. Postal Service with increased efficiency at lower costs.

Computer and software applications can make a noticeable difference in areas such as educational systems, unemployment compensation and welfare-to-work programs. Measurement of performance, productivity, and results have been persistent concerns for all executive agencies at all levels of government. The ability to measure performance at the federal level was enhanced by the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993. This was a major step taken by the federal government that shifted the focus of government officials from program “inputs” to program execution and measurement of results.

Efforts to improve performance management (PM) have not been immune from partisan politics, as both political parties view with suspicion legislation to improve performance. Many have regarded such proposals as a political tool for winning elections as much as a management reform. Public awareness of increasingly limited resources to implement public policies means that productivity and results measurements continue to grow in importance.