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The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of local government spending on local government financial performance. Furthermore, this study also investigates the moderating role of re-election on the relationship between local government spending and the financial performance for all local government and dynastic local government. The hypotheses are analyzed using multiple regression with fixed effect using two groups of samples: all local governments and dynastic local governments from 2010 to 2015. The result shows that local government spending positively affects local government financial performance, but in dynastic local government, spending has negative effect on financial performance. Moreover, this study proves that re-election strengthens the positive effect of local government spending on local government financial performance in all sample and weaken the negative effect of spending on financial performance in dynastic local government. The finding of this study is very useful for the central government in terms of policy formulation and mechanisms to limit the practice of political dynasty.

A meta-evaluation is an assessment of evaluation practices. Meta-evaluations include assessments of validity and usefulness of two or more studies that focus on the same issues. Every performance audit is grounded explicitly or implicitly in one or more theories of program evaluation. A deep understanding of alternative theories of program evaluation is helpful to gain clarity about sound auditing practices. We present a review of several theories of program evaluation.

This study includes a meta-evaluation of seven government audits on the efficiency and effectiveness of tourism departments and programs. The seven tourism-marketing performance audits are program evaluations for: Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Minnesota, Australia, and two for Hawaii. The majority of these audits are negative performance assessments. Similarly, although these audits are more useful than none at all, the central conclusion of the meta-evaluation is that most of these audit reports are inadequate assessments. These audits are too limited in the issues examined; not sufficiently grounded in relevant evaluation theory and practice; and fail to include recommendations, that if implemented, would result in substantial increases in performance.

Government service delivery is undergoing change as a result of innovations in information technology (IT). Scholars and practitioners have paid attention to electronic-government (e-government) as a strategic tool for delivering services through the Internet and thus enhancing service quality, as well as streamlining internal operations (Council for Excellence in Government [CEG], 2000; Center for Technology in Government, 1999; Ho, 2002; Norris & Moon, 2005; West, 2004). Many local governments have also initiated e-government development and taken advantage of internet-based applications to facilitate community development and communication with constituents (Benjamin, 2001; Modesitt, 2002), as well as to provide online application services (Ho, 2002; Norris & Moon, 2005). E-government brings with it the potential for greater cost-efficiency, enhanced citizen involvement, improved service quality, and increased transparency. Although e-government has the potential to provide many benefits, little research has been conducted on e-government performance and the influence of public management on e-government performance in local government.

Introduction: Interest and action concerning fiscal accountability have surged around the world in recent years, especially among Sub-Saharan African countries, because decision-making in the region has traditionally been shrouded in secrecy, with the general public having almost no access to knowledge on the management of public funds. Limited fiscal transparency has led to government fiscal crises where citizens have begun to call for better governance and participation in public funds.

Purpose: This study examines the impact of e-governance on the overall fiscal performance in SSA, while the specific objectives include the effect of e-governance on the central government’s primary balance and public external debt stock.

Methodology: The study employs annual data across 43 SSA countries to analyse the study from 2000 to 2018 using the panel-corrected standard error (PCSE) method for estimating the models. Overall fiscal performance is generated through principal component analysis (PCA), which involves a linear combination of public external debt stock and central government primary balance.

Findings: The results reveal that there is clear evidence of the effectiveness of e-governance on the overall fiscal performance, even though this is not the same for the public external debt stock in SSA, despite the success recorded in the region’s ICT and telecommunication sectors in recent times. In addition, all other control variables impact fiscal performance except population growth.

Accountability in the public sector has generally been discussed in light of public sector auditing and performance measurement. Performance audit or ‘value for money’ audit practice has been implemented at various government levels for assessing three key areas of performance – economy, efficiency and effectiveness. This practice has been significantly influenced by recent reforms in the public sector globally. Local governments or city councils play a significant role in providing community services at grass-root levels. How different actors are involved in auditing practices at the local level has attracted recent research interest world-wide. This chapter contributes to the global public sector accounting literature by presenting a critical overview of the development of local government auditing in Australia. It focusses on the role of the local government regulations and various stakeholders in audit scope, methodologies and practices with an illustration from the state of Victoria in Australia. The evidence presented will contribute to understanding international audit practices in local governments across the globe.

This chapter examines performance management, which has arguably been the kernel of New Public Management inspired version of public sector reform. The first part is a literature review that looks at experiences of performance management in both developed and developing countries. It looks at the difficulty in transferring public sector reforms from developed to developing countries. This is followed by the evaluation of performance management in the post-1994 public service in South Africa. Both the individual and organisational performance systems are highlighted, followed by an analysis of performance management reforms. There is a well-developed performance management system but the empirical data and qualitative reports found that it has not worked particularly well. There are concerns around a number of issues, including the measurement of targets; the signing of performance targets; a focus on outputs rather than outcomes; a lack of harmonisation between individual and organisational performance; a lack of capacity of managers, which in some cases is due to unskilled patronage appointments; a focus on compliance rather than performance; and a lack of accountability.

This chapter analyzes the concept of the Center of Government (CoG) and its relevance for the public administration agenda in Latin America. It identifies five key functions of the CoG: strategic management, policy coordination, performance monitoring and improvement, political management, and communications and accountability, and it assesses the region's performance for each of them, citing concrete experiences. The CoG is still an emerging topic for scholars and practitioners in Latin America. Despite the fact that CoGs in Latin America formally recognize most if not all of its five key functions, the region shows a relatively weak performance in practice. Nonetheless, recent innovative experiences show an increased interest in governments to strengthen the CoG and suggest paths that may lead to improved performance.

The CoG may be a relatively new topic in public administration research, but it is not a new phenomenon. It refers to functions that have been performed, and to structures that have existed, for several decades in many countries, including Latin American ones. However, a number of factors have led to an increased relevance of CoG institutions in recent years. The first section of this chapter will attempt to define the concept of “Center of Government”; to enumerate the CoG's main political and technical functions; to describe the typical structures that perform these functions; and to indicate why these institutions play a critical role in current times. Then, Section 2 will discuss how CoG institutions in Latin American countries have been performing their core functions, identifying regional trends and country-level configurations. The political economy of CoG strengthening will also be covered. Section 3 concludes.

Policymakers worldwide have proposed a new contract – the ‘social impact bond’ (SIB) – which they claim can allay the underperformance afflicting not-for-profits, by tying the private returns of (social) investors to the success of social programs. We investigate experimentally how SIBs perform in a first-best world, where investors are rational and able to obtain hard information on not-for-profits’ performance. Using a principal-agent multitasking framework, we compare SIBs to inputs-based contracts (IBs) and performance-based contracts (PBs). IBs are based on a piece-rate mechanism, PBs on a non-binding bonus mechanism, and SIBs on a mechanism that, due to the presence of an investor, offers full enforceability. Although SIBs can perfectly enforce good behaviour, they also require the principal (i.e., government) to relinquish control over the agent’s (i.e., not-for-profit’s) payoff to a self-regarding investor, which prevents the principal and agent from being reciprocal. In spite of these drawbacks, in our experiment SIBs outperformed IBs and PBs. We therefore conclude that, at least in our laboratory test-bed, SIBs can allay the underperformance of not-for-profits.

This article focuses on the role of accounting performance measurement in the creation of public value in the context of the network associated with the justice portfolio within the Australian Commonwealth.

We use concepts of bonding and bridging social capital to theorize the use of performance measurement in government networks.

We find that there is relatively little use of performance measures that reported network level performance and the primary emphasis was on building social capital with funders rather than across network partner agencies. We therefore conclude that existing Australian public sector performance measurement practices are not supportive of intra-governmental networks and therefore the notion that improvement in performance measurement will deliver public value needs further reflection.

The research scope is restricted to governmental network performance measures from a justice portfolio budget perspective. Despite the focused attention of the research, the application of the findings has relevance across all government portfolios and broader public management more generally.

Despite calls for accountability and governance innovation where public value is delivered across organizational boundaries through dependency and collaboration, the case environment offers little evidence that forms of performance measurement over the period examined recognize this practicality. The research primarily adds considerable weight to the argument that the delivery of public value by networks requires an evolution in accountability and performance reporting away from traditional institutional forms of performance representation.

The research is highly novel in its unveiling and examination of contemporary performance measurement reporting from a network perspective.

Increasing the productivity of publicly funded infrastructure and human capital is an imperative faced by every nation, especially in the health sector, where most nations are struggling with almost continuous increases in the proportion of national budgets spent each year on health and health care. Efficiency is one aspect of the broader issue of productivity within the health sector. This case study examines how a generic Government-funded body, with no specific health or health care mandate, can stimulate improvements in efficiency in Government-funded hospitals and healthcare and thereby contribute to improved productivity in these vital services.