Measuring up: Governing's Guide to Performance Measurement for Geniuses (and Other Public Managers)

Book Description
A hands-on, user-friendly, somewhat irreverant guide to the management technique known as performance measurement for federal, state and local government public managers.

From the Back Cover
Federal, state and local public managers: It's Coming...Are You Ready? The era of performance measurement is beginning, and government will never be the same. "Measuring Up" is a down-to-earth, plain-language, not-entirely-reverent guide to this hot new management technique that answers the questions: What is it? What does all this jargon mean? Where do I start? How do I make it work for me? Advance Praise (Sort Of) for "Measuring Up": "Very impressive. It touches on many of the nuances of performance measurement in an entertaining and interesting way. When I try to do that, I get glazed expressions and open-mouth drooling." --Richard Tracy, director, Audit Services Division, Portland, Oregon "In our mind, one measure of a good book is the speed and ease with which it can make a difference in the readers' life. On that scale, we'd give this book a 10." --Richard Greene and Katherine Barrett, journalists and national experts on performance measurement in the public sector "I really loved it and found myself reading passages of it to my 15-year-old daughter who appreciated the humor and turn of phrase." --Shelley Metzenbaum, former director of state and local relations for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency "Nauseatingly flip." --Jeffrey Tryens, executive director, Oregon Progress Board

About the Author
Jonathan Walters is a senior staff writer at Governing Magazine. He has covered federal, state and local public policy for the past 20 years, with an emphasis on management and administration. He lives in Ghent, New York, where he has learned a good deal more than he ever cared to about government by serving as co-chair of the Ghent Planning Board. For fun, he helps pull cats off roofs and put out barn fires as an active member of the Ghent Volunteer Fire Company No. 1.

Excerpted from Measuring Up : Governing's Guide to Performance Measurement for Geniuses (And Other Public Managers by Jonathan Walters. Copyright © 1998. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
Applying performance measurement to what government does is not a math equation. It is a complicated and frequently very messy art. Using isolated performance measures as any sort of ultimate driver of governmental decision-making is dumb. "Results" always have to be judged in the broader context of the greater good.


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