Performance measurement and performance budgeting in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s

Authors

Dan Williams, CUNY Bernard M Baruch CollegeFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-2004

Abstract

The period of the 1950s and 1960s reflects the rise of performance budgeting. It also reflects the rise of the post-war generation of academic social scientists, which is roughly the second generation of statistical social scientists within the United States. This is the period of expanding program evaluation and the rise of policy analysis. While policy analysis is fairly distinct, program evaluation is largely the same thing as performance measurement, but as practiced by social scientists with a different skill set than public administrators. This paper examines the continued evolution of performance measurement practices and other closely related practices including those of productivity improvement and program evaluation as they developed through the 1950s and 1960s. As this is a period of performance budgeting, there will also be an examination of the link back to budgeting, planning, and policy analysis.

Comments

This paper was originally a conference paper at the EGPA conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia and was published in an online conference proceedings for some years. At some point that proceedings terminated.