| Περίληψη: | Public Administration is facing tremendous challenges and it is at the center of political, economic and social developments. In Greece Public Administration presents serious problems, the analysis and elimination of which requires the adoption and implementation of new organizational structures, administrative practices and governance processes. Performance measurement is a significant driver of the use of performance information in management, in particular for decision-making on the delivery of public spending programs.
There is increasing recognition that performance evaluation of public spending programs should emphasize on their implementation rather than focus solely on their outcomes. This study for the first time presents a framework for comparing the delivery or administrative efficiency of public spending programs, based on a novel application of a quantitative operational technique, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). It is focused on the European Union context and precisely in the implementation of Greek LEADER operational program.
Research on performance in public spending programs is focused mainly on their effects on target groups and areas. To the best of our knowledge, there is no a study quantifying the delivery efficiency of a public spending program. This research contributes to improve the current methods of public program delivery assessment by exploring new methodologies, based on a frontier technique, which can effectively provide enhanced managerial information to program implementers and managing authorities and recommendations to ministries towards better public policy implementation.
From the alternative frontier methods available, in this study it was chosen to explore in detail the use of Data Envelopment Analysis due to the greater flexibility to incorporate the multidimensional nature of the socioeconomic development policy, the use of minimal assumptions on the shape of the best practice frontier and because it has the advantage of allowing comparisons with the best observed performance by constructing a best practice frontier based on empirical input and output data. Moreover, we apply new nonparametric estimation procedures based on DEA to estimate technical change, relative efficiency change, and productivity change in program delivery as well as the components of efficiency change. In order to evaluate the impact of contextual variables on program productivity we developed a two-stage method that uses DEA in the first stage and OLS regression in the second stage.
Through the use of linear programming, DEA constructs a frontier from a subset of efficient best practice program implementers and identifies which delivery units are inefficient compared to it. Output oriented CCR and BBC DEA models provide technical efficiency scores which give the magnitude of the inefficiencies present in relation to the distance of the inefficient units to the frontier enveloping them. For each inefficient implementer, DEA gives efficient resource savings and output increases and a reference set or peer group of efficient implementers, which is most similar to it in their mix of services and resources and constitutes a realistic term of comparison.
Strong evidence of operational and scale inefficiencies in mid-term of program implementation is found, suggesting that the delivery system suffers significant absorption problems due to inefficiencies in program administration. These findings emphasize the need to improve program administrative capacities in Greece and suggest adjustments in a number of program implementers charged with the delivery of rural development policy. Furthermore, the study finds significant time improvements in productivity of program delivery. The results of productivity growth and changes in its components from the pre- to post- mid-term implementation period indicate that program implementers experienced a statistically significant increase on average productivity between the two periods. In addition, it is found that the productivity gain may be primarily attributed to a change in relative efficiency rather than to technical progress.
Evidence from the comparison of efficiency scores across the regions indicates that location of implementers and their programs might have influenced their delivery performance.
We also confirmed the presence of economies of scale in program administration which might be a justification for selecting bigger target areas, population and programs, since economies of scale may require a larger program area than it is possible within a particular small local area.
Finally, with respect to factors affecting program delivery productivity, both sizes of delivery mechanism and program budget are significant variables which have implications on program productivity. This infers that local program implementers with average administration resources and larger program budgets have higher likelihood of being efficient.
Overall, the results of this study illustrate that DEA, in contrast to traditional program performance measures, is an insightful tool in revealing administrative inefficiencies in program delivery by capturing the operational and scale components of performance while taking into account the complex mix of tasks and interventions carried out by its operators and also allowing for innovation and locally designed solutions able to meet community’ needs. Moreover, the proposed technique may be easily integrated into a program evaluation exercise and may be utilized as a knowledge tool to support rational management decision-making and program improvement.
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