Performance in Public Administration. A Systemic Approach

There are two points of view on the performance of the public administration: an internal one, governed by the principle of the three “E”’s and an external one, a measure of the public accessibility to the civil service. The problem with these two points of view in that, although they show the same direction they are of opposite bearings. Even though the inherent purpose is ensuring the citizen’s access to the civil service, serving the tax payer with their problems thus serving the whole community in a most efficient manner, we cannot overlook the fact that the resources of the public administration are often more limited than those of private economic agents, especially when considering that the civil service usually involves very high operating costs. In these conditions the performance of the public administration is defined as an optimum between the capacity to deliver the civil service towards the citizens and the associated costs of this capacity.