Measuring and communicating public value: An overview and comparison of existing tools

Osborne (2017) recently stated that “the creation of value/public value in public services delivery” represents one of “the themes that may well come to dominate in the future.” The concept of public value (PV) sees increased use in practice and research, with its main contribution resting on interrogating the means of upholding the relationships of legitimacy. These include both a managerial framework dimension focusing on strengthening process and outcome legitimacy through increases in efficiency and targeting of delivery (Moore 1995, Kelly et al. 2002, Bozeman 2000), as well as a governance framework dimension focusing on strengthening input and process legitimacy through fostering networks of deliberation and participation by means of collaboration and co-creation (Stoker 2006), and a stronger focus on citizens‘ rights. For both of these dimensions and their attendant mechanisms of securing legitimacy, measuring (appraising, evaluating) and communicating public value seem to be critical. A number of various techniques and tools have been developed in the public value discourse, including Balanced Scorecard, Public Value Scorecard, Public Service Value Model, various kinds of dashboards and others. At the same time, tools designed to tackle similar fundamental issues (such as multiplicity of stakeholders and interests, incommensurability of values or comparison and aggregation of performance across multiple domains) have already been developed for use in areas such as urban governance, participatory land use planning, sustainability impact assessment and others. These include e.g. social multicriteria analyses, multi-scale integrated assessments, cost-benefit analyses, or indices of wellbeing and quality of life. In the first part of this paper, we discuss the various criteria for a sound public value appraisal and communication tool. We attempt to link these criteria to various types of legitimacy and their requirements, distinguishing also between managerial and governance dimensions of public value management. In the second part, on the basis of the identification of criteria for public value appraisal and communication tools, we analyse and compare selected available tools.