Good Local Public Administration and Performance. An Empirical Study

Abstract

The performance of local public administration it is an extremely actual topic and its research has a strategical importance. The objective in this paper is to see how Romanian local authorities understand the sense of performance and its aspects. It is very important for local collectivities to have a good local public administration and a continuous process of performance improvement. To get to the improvement process you have to start with evaluation. The purpose of the study is to build a mirror of different aspects of Romanian local public administration performance, in the limit of information collected from the loca l public administration units investigated: communes, towns and municipalities. The method used for this research was the analysis of documents about the performance management of public services and the local and regional development, legislation, studies and reports with relevant content. The main tool of the research was the questionnaire and its questions were groupe d in six investigation dimensions. The interpretation of results was made in the light of information collected. Conclusions and recommendations of the study were pertained to the meaning of public administration performance from the specialized literatu re and legislation. The set of the performance indicators suggested in the paper represents the starting point of an appropiate performance evaluation in the context of Romanian local public administration.