Social sector productivity: a task perspective

This research note adopts a public management framework to explore the complexity and challenges of introducing productivity measurement in the social sector. The framework draws on James Q Wilson’s matrix of government tasks (Wilson, 1989) and literature which explores its strengths and limitations (Gregory (1995a) and Gregory and Lonti (2008)). This note applies the matrix to a set of tasks within one organisation in the social sector. The tasks are drawn from the 2015/2016 Ministry of Social Development (MSD) Annual Report. Although limitations exist with this approach, the process of applying the framework and associated feedback received raise interesting insights surrounding the challenge of measuring public sector capability.