Summary:

In recent years governments in many developing countries have followed developed
nations in establishing results and performance monitoring frameworks that measure
and report on progress against strategic plans, budgets and sector strategies. In
addition, some Asian nations have experimented with increased devolution of fiscal
authority to empower regional and local governments, in part to stimulate
performance-oriented reform. Increased information technology support is another of
the many changes in progress to improve performance and employee productivity and
to create knowledge cultures in Asia. This paper reports on these and related
management reform initiatives and offers analysis of their progress to date. The first
section of the paper addresses five key elements of the new results and performance
orientation: (i) clarifying the language of performance, (ii) defining indicative
performance indicators, (iii) exploring tools for performance measurement, (iv) making
changes to improve performance, and (v) creating the performance and knowledge
culture in organizations. The paper then explores fiscal devolution in Asia, illustrating
reform through five nation case studies. The paper ends with conclusions on the
progress of fiscal devolution and results and performance-oriented reforms in the
public sector in Asia.