ABSTRACT
The public services in the United States and the United Kingdom experimented in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the idea of programming, planning, and budgeting systems (PPB), which can be seen as an ancestor of the strategic planning systems that were subsequently developed in the late 1980s and 1990s. There were also attempts by the United Nations during the 1970s to encourage the use of planning based on objective setting to produce improvements in performance. Again this can be seen as a precursor to contemporary strategic management practices in the public services.
