5. Results-Oriented Government: Funding Outcomes, Not Inputs

The authors argue that governments have focused on inputs but ignored outcomes, words like accountability, performance, and results. Under traditional systems employees are likely to protect their jobs and pursue larger budgets, larger staffs, and more authority. The authors recommend results- or performance-oriented government, which call for new ways of measuring and rewarding outcomes in various fields, such as job training, vocational education, housing, highway construction, even courts.

The authors suggest several themes for result-oriented government:

• What gets measured gets done.

• If you don't measure results, you can't tell success from failure.

• If you cannot see success, you cannot reward it.

• If you cannot reward success, you are probably rewarding failure.

• If you can't see success, you can't learn from it; unexpected success may be an important lesson to be learned.

• If you can't recognize failure, you can't correct it; no one outside the bureaucracy can tell if these agencies do anything worthwhile, because no one measures the results of their work.

• If you can demonstrate results, you can win public support.

6. Customer-Driven Government: Meeting the Needs of Customer, Not the Bureaucracy

The authors argue that government services often fail to meet the needs of their customers, because funding for services comes not from customers but from elected representatives like legislatures and city councils. As our society become more complex and diverse, the needs and preferences of customers are no longer homogeneous, yet governments still provide standardized services.

The authors argue that government must make a greater effort to perceive the needs of customers and give them a choice of producers.

This "customer-driven system" approach has many advantages:

• It makes service providers be accountable to their customers: if customers can choose their providers, providers should meet customers’ needs.

• It can prevent political influence from choosing the service providers. If the public agency select providers, politicians may interfere with the decision. In this case, the providers with the largest constituencies will be selected, regardless of the quality of the service they can provide.

• It stimulates more innovation. Competition will make providers pursue the most efficient way of providing service, so that they will invest in innovation.

• It makes it possible for customers to choose the service that they want.

• This approach wastes less, because the quality and quantity of service are determined when supply meets what consumers want, rather than when supply meets what legislatures or city councils want.

• It makes consumers commit themselves to the service. For instance, students are more committed to education in schools they have chosen.

• It provides the opportunity for greater equity.

There are some limitations to this approach. It cannot be applied to the regulatory sector, because in this case the primary customers are not individuals but the community as a whole. This approach is best applied to service delivery. The other drawback is that it cannot be applied when market is dominated by a monopoly situation, and when competition for a service would result in inefficiency, as is the case with garbage collection routes.