Recent years have witnessed various analytical methods for comparing or benchmarking technologies widely applied due to multiple public sector reforms. Such mechanisms became widespread because sometimes there was a lack of other criteria to assess better performance except for comparing separate characteristic features of the systems being analyzed. Besides, introduction of management by objectives gave rise to multiple targets, which might be used as a base for comparison. Thus, along with the necessity for, nowadays there appeared a strong possibility for making effective use of benchmarking to manage changes and searching for a “second better” decision, including public management improvement. The article presents theoretical benchmarking issues, gives a brief outline for benchmarking initiatives derived from the world practices, and sets the requirements for public service benchmarking systems. Practices for better performance assessment, comparing activities and outcomes of government bodies, local authorities and regional structures should become an essential tool in the analysis of the current status, planning/developing of the changes in the context of public management reforms being carried out. Therefore, the article sets forward legal and guidance documents’ contents proposals, enabling introduction of benchmarking system into the current practices of executive bodies of an entity within the Russian Federation. The authors of the article conclude that introduction of benchmarking practices into planning and budgeting schemes for government bodies and other organizations, delivering public services, is considered to be the most essential condition for benchmarking efficiency in executive bodies. It is advisable to facilitate such integration taking into account the decisions made on the targets’ legal status and correlation mechanism of the achieved target values and the amount of financing given to services suppliers.
Елисеенко et al. (Fri,) studied this question.