Performing 'performance' - A comedy in five acts

The public service in the United Kingdom is awash with performance data. Fr om the ubiquitous league tables for schools, local authorities and police s ervices, through Key performance indicators for civil service agencies righ t up to Government-level Public Service Agreements, the number of published performance data sets probably now reaches five figures annually. The auth or discusses some of the aspects of being what are probably the most perfor mance reported' public services in the world.