ABSTRACT
Benchmarking is a term given to the process of measuring standards of actual performance against those achieved by others, identifying best practice, and taking appropriate steps to improve. Benchmarking may be against performance data, practice, behaviour, attitudes or perceptions. While benchmarking tends to be thought of in terms of ‘hard’ statistical data, governments rise and fall on the basis of people’s perceptions, and policies in the media age are shaped powerfully by the benchmarking of public attitudes. Attitudes and expectations as benchmarks alongside performance data have, therefore, an important role to play.
