How did new public management change the way governments measure performance?

New Public Management (NPM) fundamentally shifted government performance measurement from a focus on procedural compliance to an emphasis on results, outputs, and efficiency. By applying private-sector management techniques to the public sector, NPM introduced several key changes to how performance is evaluated:12

• Focus on Results: NPM moved away from traditional administrative concerns—which prioritized the regular implementation of policies—toward a model centered on performance and policy output.2
• Performance Indicators: Governments began utilizing concrete metrics, such as "targets" and "benchmarks," to audit inputs and outputs and relate them to financial budgets.12
• Quasi-Market Accountability: In the absence of standard market indicators like profit levels, NPM introduced proxies for consumer choice to judge performance based on customer satisfaction.2
• Management Techniques: Various frameworks were adopted to promote effective management, including management by objectives (MBO), which sets clear goals for managers, and total quality management (TQM), which emphasizes quality across all organizational processes.1

Ultimately, these reforms aimed to achieve "value for money," though they often resulted in increased procedural requirements due to the proliferation of monitoring and audit exercises.12