Steve Kelman
During the past several years the most aggressive effort in the history of government has been made in the United Kingdom to use an innovative public management tool – the use of performance metrics and performance goals in the management of public sector organizations – both to improve the performance of public-sector organizations and also to recast some of the terms of democratic deliberation in the UK. As a pioneer in this innovation, the UK example may provide lessons for other governments as they seek to further implement this innovation. Professor Kelman's research, largely focusing on interviews with managers within UK government, seeks to discover how United Kingdom central government institutions have gone about trying to influence the performance of frontline organizations that must actually meet these targets. A special emphasis is on change and intra-governmental learning over time, as well as an exploration of evolving relationships between the central government (especially the newly established Prime Minister's Delivery Unit) and individual departments.
In a smaller project, Professor Kelman will examine the impact of the targets initiatives on British governance. Searching both quantitatively and qualitatively, he seeks to describe and analyze the evolution of press and parliamentary attention to performance metrics in reporting on government and holding it to account. Lastly, he will examine the evolution in ways the government has communicated target information to the public.