Current approaches to citizen involvement in performance measurement and questions they raise

Public managers have considerable discretion on whether and to what extent to involve citizens in governmental performance measurement and management processes. Local government managers have used that discretion to devise numerous mechanisms for bringing citizens into their performance measurement initiatives, in an attempt to better align goals and measures with citizen preferences. But unlike fields such as governmental accounting, where national standards and practices are well established, citizen involvement is an evolving field, characterized by experimentation and variation in approaches but little standardization. Although governments willingly share information about their citizen involvement efforts, there are not yet many places governments can turn to find such information efficiently.