ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the issue of implementing public sector reform through the two examples of the United Kingdom and France. It focuses on the target setting process and its supporting performance-monitoring system as a relevant illustration of the implementation problems faced in the modernization of a public service. The chapter shows how on the same issue, two radically different approaches can be developed by two countries and how the approaches could be considered more as complementary than opposite. The experience of the 1970s showS that it was too difficult to introduce performance measures from the top because there are too many products at the general level of a department and it requires too sophisticated information systems. The common feature between both France and the United Kingdom is that performance monitoring is intended to make possible a more autonomous management of agencies: without any performance-measurement system, central departments cannot assess whether the targets are met or whether the autonomy is misused.
