ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the evolution of preferences for how services and products provided by government and nonprofit organizations should be measured. It discusses the challenges that elevated demands for measurement and reporting impose for government and nonprofit providers. The chapter explores the efforts and ambitions of many institutions and individuals to raise public awareness and dialogue about learning how well government works. The third epoch Dahler-Larsen delineates is the audit society and it pertains to the calls for measurement of program outcomes during the last four decades. In the United States, local governments have taken the lead in measuring program outcomes. The origin, however, of the outcomes push at the local level dates back to the federal effort in 1961 to link the "effectiveness" of programs to budget categories in the US Department of Defense (DoD) using a system called the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS).
