Making Performance Budgeting Work

Abstract

Performance budgeting practice is not monolithic. There are different forms of performance budgeting which seek to link results and funding in different ways. Performance budgeting systems also vary in respect to their objectives—in particular, some place more emphasis upon allocative efficiency than upon technical efficiency, or vice versa. They also have, as discussed in Part One, differing information requirements. In Part Two, we turn our attention from information requirements to the type of link between results and funding which performance budgeting systems strive to build. The primary objective here is to identify and assess the mechanisms by which each form of performance budgeting aims to achieve its intended impact upon allocative and/or technical efficiency, with the aim of deepening our understanding of what approaches to performance budgeting work and in what context.