Performance contracting and service delivery: Influence on national government administration

In spite of the several public service reform programmes that have been rolled out by the government of Kenya, there is declining performance of the public service compared with the quality of service delivery by the NGAOs to the citizens. Numerous measures undertaken before did not provide a framework for guiding behavior towards attainment of results or ensured accountability in finance stewardship. This was until 2003 when the Government outlined its commitment to improve performance, corporate governance and management in the public service through the introduction of performance contracting – as a management tool for measuring performance against negotiated performance targets. This was expected to rationalize public management culture to focus on outputs, efficiency and cost effectiveness by ensuring that top-level managers are accountable for results; public resources are focused on attainment of key national policy priorities of the government; performance is measured, and eventually; performance among public agencies is competitive; budgetary resources are linked to performance targets, and ultimately; reward for work is linked to measurable performance.