“Benchmarking Performance Comes of Age in the Public Sector”

For many years, private sector companies have benchmarked their performance over time and in comparison with other companies in their industry, and set targets to improve performance within certain time frames. Now the public sector is beginning to think in these terms as well. Rather than merely keeping track of the resources (money and personnel) invested in a project, public managers are seeking reliable ways of measuring what the public got for the investment.