1、2166 单词， 12500 英文字符， 3500 汉字 出处： A M. PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT AND BEST VALUE AUDIT IN SCOTLAND: A RESEARCH NOTE ON THEORY AND PRACTICEJ. Financial Accountability & Management, 2008, 24(4):439453. 外文文献翻译 原文 : Performance Management And Best Value Audit In Scotland:A Research Note On Theory And Practic
2、e Audit Scotland highlights West Lothians approach in its 2005 overview report as a model of good practice. It states: Priorities should flow from the overarching Community Plan, through the Corporate Plan to individual Service Plans. This does not in fact show priorities at all it assumes these flo
3、w downwards from the plans,but produce no evidence linking priorities and budgets. What it does not do, as the Audit Commission in England observed, is identify a few clear priorities which provide wider criteria against which departmental spending proposals can be assessed. By comparison, Inverclyd
4、e Council received the most critical report of a Best Value Audit which we have received so far. It highlights extensive and fundamental weaknesses in leadership and direction. The problem for evaluation research is that the Commission simply asserts that its comprehensive planning, budgeting and pe
5、rformance management model is best practice, it does not validate this with empirical research evidence to support this judgement. In most councils, however, there is only limited evidence of progress in integrating planning, budgeting and performance management. Only three councils were regarded as
6、 developing policy-led budgeting. The need to better link budgets with plans is a recurring criticism of councils. Only three of the councils are regarded as following best practice, matching resources to corporate priorities, and redistributing funding rather than following historic trends. Most au
7、thorities are deemed to have a traditional approach to budgets, reflecting the previous years baseline, with little redistribution of resources, and weak links to service plans. The evidence on which these judgements are made is not presented in the reports. The Commission advocates policy-led budge
8、ting, but never defines it, nor provides any exposition of what it requires in practice. Rather, the reports reiterate its conventional orthodoxy on the need to integrate policy and budget planning, to ensure priorities are funded, and allocations are consistent with service plans. Although the Comm
9、ission infers these developments are best practice, there is little evidence of such models actually operating successfully in practice. Budgetary studies consistently show that budgetary systems are variants of incrementalism, differing in the extent to which they review budgetary baselines, set pr
10、iorities and consider options. In practice, budgetary systems in local government are incremental in the sense of focusing on marginal changes to baselines, because statutory, policy and contractual commitments can only be changed slowly, over time. In this way incrementalism simplifies choices and
11、makes the process manageable. Budgetary decisions are essentially political, as there is no objective way of comparing different programmes and determining choices. Authorities adopting a strategic approach develop a framework of strategic priorities covering broader policy objectives which can be u
12、sed as wider criteria to assess between functional proposals, e.g., how the proposal contributes to wider policy goals such as tackling poverty and equality, within an incremental process. In their overview report, Audit Scotland argue that priorities should flow from the overarching Community Plan,
13、 through the Corporate Plan to individual Service and Employee Development Plans using the West Lothian clear planning hierarchy as an example. However, they conclude that few councils use the priorities identified in their corporate plan as a basis for setting budgets. This lack of progress comes a
14、s little surprise, given the extensive research literature showing limited interest by politicians in linking resources to outcomes. A recent European study concluded that the increasing rhetoric of a performance orientation in government is difficult to square with continuing problems of integratin
15、g performance data in budgets. Another review of European practice reported similar findings, with no clear evidence of budgeting by programmes with measurable targets. Finally, outcome measurement has not even begun to overcome the attribution problem, whereby results can be distorted by external f
16、actors to the programme concerned. This makes the concept of authorities being held to account for delivering outcomes difficult to take seriously. Comparative studies consistently show linking resources to results is problematic in practice. Indeed, Audit Scotland recognises this problem in its rep
17、ort on Community Planning. It observes that:it may also be difficult to attribute improvement in a desired outcome to a particular initiative or change in service delivery, and outcomes may be influenced by factors out with the Community Planning Partnerships control. However, rather than acknowledg
18、ing the implications of this weakness for the realism of its approach, Audit Scotland responds as the Accounts Commission did over the limits to PIs under VFM Audit by simply asserting inconsistently that: despite these challenges, it is important for CPPs to track changes in their priority policy a
19、reas in order to demonstrate direction of travel and build an understanding of how outcomes may be affected by partnership activity. This conclusion is difficult to accept given the accumulating weight of evidence that ?however theoretically attractive linking resources with results through outcome-
20、based budgeting is ? it remains a highly impractical model in practice, and criticising authorities for failing to organise in this way is clearly unfair. Progress and performance The links between planning, budgeting and performance are not examined systematically in the Best Value Audits. With few
21、 locally driven targets, the Commissions approach to auditing performance relies mainly on The Accounts Commission Statutory Performance Indicators, inspectors reports, and residential surveys. The use of SPIs also reflects the gap between theory and practice.The auditors state their intention is to
22、 measure local progress over time, but despite not using comprehensive league tables, the SPIs are used for comparison, in both aspects of assessment Assessmen In a recent paper, the Auditor General for Scotland concluded that the new Best Value regime is placing performance at the centre of the loc
23、al government agenda, through an integrated overview of what a council is trying to achieve, how it is organised to improve, and how well it is performing. He sees the demonstration of continuous improvement as a central requirement of Best Value. This review of practice, however, highlights a numbe
24、r of problems of methodology and measurement in the assessment of continuous improvement in the audit process. The legislation provides authorities with a statutory duty to make arrangements to secure continuous improvement in performance, and the statutory guidance sets out what ministers regard as
25、 proper arrangements, which include: ? a framework for planning and budgeting that includes detailed and realistic plans linked to available resources, to achieve the authoritys goals as service delivery level； effective performance management systems, which can include the use of external compariso
26、n, through performance issues which can be identified,monitored and addressed. The model which is assumed to give effect to these conditions is set out in Appendix B. It shows that the guidance has formalised the conventional audit theory as to how authorities should organise their planning, budgeti
27、ng and performance systems, and the model retains concepts and methods first set out under Value for Money Audit, and therefore is having little impact on practice. Several authorities are reported as having clear visions and strategic objectives for their areas, but as was demonstrated earlier, the
28、se are very broad and of questionable relevance for providing a realistic basis for setting priorities in the budget process. For the development of a strategic approach which guides resource allocation and performance management, a more focused approach with a few core corporate priorities is requi
29、red. This was also the conclusion of a recent report by HM Treasury. It noted: -the Audit Commission found that these local service providers that have identified a small number of core goals have been most successful in achieving large and sustained improvements in performance. Authorities failure
30、to meet the aspirations of the model is more a reflection of the impracticality of the model than the competence of local authorities. Although the audits are consistently critical of traditional budgeting i.e. incrementalism and favour policy-led budgeting which redistributes resources between depa
31、rtments, no convincing critique of incrementalism is provided, nor is policy-led budgeting defined and described. In practice, stable allocations at departmental level can conceal changes within baselines to promote corporate priorities. It is not the degree of redistribution which matters, but that
32、 choices at the margins are effectively targeted on priorities. Assessments of performance in service delivery were problematic in the absence of local indicators, as the current batch of SPIs are inadequate to capture real improvement in service provision, and require careful consideration of exter
33、nal factors in drawing comparison. If comparisons are to be used, and there is a strong case in principle for this, it would be better within tightly drawn family groups, and also through comparative costs as performance cannot be assessed sensibly without a resource dimension. The Commissions Audit
34、 Guide to authorities states that performance information should be credible and balanced, reflecting the realities of finite resources and competing priorities and focused on core services, not simply improvements. There is an inherent contradiction between the Commissions wish to see comprehensive
35、 service plans with objectives and targets for all activities, and the necessity to prioritise budget allocations. This requires an incremental approach which shows what outputs new spending will deliver, and how these will contribute to strategic priorities The lack of progress in developing arrangements for Best Value is consistent with past experience of VFM audit. Linking financial and performance information is easier to advocate than achieve. One recent review of practice concluded that attempts to link budgetary allocations
