Performance measurement in planning - towards a holistic view

The UK's House of Commons Public Services Committee has described the state of performance measurement across the public sector as being data rich and information poor. This reflects the fact that the performance of most public services is extremely complex to measure, and as a result, performance measurement is often limited to those aspects that can easily and expediently be measured. Examining this conundrum, and in particular the processes, impact, and future of performance measurement in planning, provided the basis for research reported in this paper. The research drew from and relates to a profound and complex discussion about how the quality of the planning process per se can be reliably and usefully measured. The paper begins by summarising the results of a wide-ranging literature review in the form of a series of conceptual dilemmas. The objectives and methods of the research are then established, before the key research tool-the analytical framework-is presented. Space does not permit a full examination of the empirical phases of the research, although the results from this work is summarised before the research objectives are once again revisited. These lead, finally, to a suggested new model for measuring performance in planning.