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Measurement and Assessment of Efficiency and Productivity in Kentucky State Government Services

• This report examines the provision of a variety of government services within Kentucky. The provision of these public services, specifically the cost of providing these services is examined for the years 1992, 1997, and 2002. In addition, employment and salaries in government services are also examined. In addition to comparing costs within Kentucky during this period, the costs of providing public services are also compared to costs of the same government services by its neighboring states • For most of the services and government functions, cost comparisons are made on a per capita basis in 2002 dollars. Employment is also adjusted to reflect differences in population. Salary comparison are adjusted for inflation and in some cases also adjusted to reflect differences in private earnings among the states. • It is important to note that differences in costs by themselves, particularly when measured on a per capita basis, do not imply differences in government performance or the efficiency in the provision of government services. For some services, population may not be a very accurate measure of the client base or determinant of costs. For a number of government functions we use alternative measures as a base for costs. For example, correction costs are on an inmate basis, education costs on a per student basis, highway costs on mileage basis, and parks and recreation on a visitor basis. While we believe that these alternative bases for costs more accurately reflect the determinants of costs, they, too, fail to reflect differences in the quality or extent of services. • Despite these qualifications about the measurement of both the quantity and quality of government services, we believe that the measurement of costs done in this study represents a unique effort among state governments and provides important information about service production for state governments. While the evidence presented in this study is not, by itself, conclusive regarding efficacy of provision of public services we believe it can serve to direct state governments about what services might need to be investigated more thoroughly. From our review of the efforts of other states at performance management or " benchmarking " , this study is unique in the extensive quantification of costs and comparisons of these costs over both time and among other states. While the more qualitative approach found in the typical performance evaluation study has value, we believe that our focus on costs complements the …