THE STATE OF “IGNORED” PERFORMANCE REPORTING BY GOVERNMENTS IN THE USA

Abstract

Citizens and politicians alike in the USA have become increasingly frustrated with government performance and the non-transparent decisions made by their elected and appointed officials. At present the USA is suffering from unparalleled sequestering in response to the last thirty years of newly adopted government performance budgeting and reporting initiatives that have been implemented with questionable efficacy.  The promises by SLGs, which accompanied these new initiatives, to provide constituents with decision useful performance information and transparency, were poorly delivered.   Therefore, even though many USA governments have provided some form of performance reporting or performance budgeting information, these documents have not gained acceptance as the “go-to” report for assessing governmental performance. This paper traces this build up in no confidence and compares US government agencies with government performance reporting in New Zealand.