Civil Service Systems and Responsibility, Accountability and Performance: A Multi-dimensional Approach

Abstract

Performance is considered to stand at the very heart of modern public management efforts aiming at the improvement of public sector productivity and quality. Notwithstanding the often presumed modernity, performance improvement is really a venerable topic; the roots stretching back in time to the beginnings of modern government and the study of public administration. In its most essential meaning, performance relates to actions taken as a response to a particular demand more or less resulting in the accomplishment of a particular task or tasks. This response contains both a collective (or more precisely formulated: organizational) and an individual component. Often linked to performance are appraisal of results and efforts. This appraisal (and the mechanisms through which this is accomplished) is often what performance discussions concentrate on, and the closely related concepts of accountability and responsibility are crucial components in this evaluative process. Given the diverse set of values involved in assessing the results of public sector activity, appraisal has become a compound and complex activity in which various routes can be taken or mechanisms utilized (as explained below). In this chapter, I analyse the role that the civil service plays in this process. Traditionally the role of the civil service has been considered from a constitutional-legal perspective and so evaluated as somewhat peripheral.