The Evolution of Performance Budgeting Amidst Other Public Financial Management Reforms The Experience of Australia and the Netherlands

This chapter examines the performance budgeting reform experiences of Australia and the Netherlands as both exemplify Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries that were viewed as leading with regard to performance budgeting (PB) adoption during the New Public Management wave of reforms. It describes the development of program budgeting and performance management in the two countries from the 1980s, particularly at the national level, highlighting some of the key debates and more recent developments. The Netherlands first introduced a set of urgently needed reforms to its basic public financial management system also in the 1980s. The adoption of PB in the Netherlands cannot be viewed separately from a number of reforms that largely shaped the institutional landscape of public financial management in which these subsequent reforms were staged. The introduction of PB in the Netherlands included moving from a traditional line-item budget to a program budget where funds were authorized according to general policy objectives.