Public Sector Benchmarking

Public sector benchmarking is the structured comparison of an organisation's processes, costs and outcomes against those of high-performing peers in order to identify gaps and adopt better practices. Formalised for management by Robert Camp at Xerox in his 1989 book, benchmarking moves from simply ranking who is best to understanding why the best perform well and how their practices can be adapted. In government it spans comparisons across municipalities, agencies, hospitals or schools, and underpins international comparative datasets such as the OECD's Government at a Glance. The aim is learning and improvement, not merely producing a league table.