Advancing the practice of public procurement performance measurement: a framework for conceptualizing efficiency and effectiveness

This article provides a conceptual, applied framework for public procurement performance measurement. A reimagined systems–theoretical approach reveals a conceptual model by which public managers and policy-makers can understand their current public procurement key performance indicators (KPIs). Focusing on distinctions between the public and private appreciation of efficiency and effectiveness, the model was applied to three European Single Market Scoreboard public procurement KPIs to illustrate where measures tend to fail. Implications from an empirical analysis of aggregated contract notice and award data suggest public procurement performance measures are symbolic indicants rather than true measures of performance unless normalized across the appropriate unit of analysis which are heterogeneous and, in the case of multilevel governance, often have different procurement goals and policy priorities. The model identifies the theoretical challenges facing the metrics used to assess the performance of procurement systems, while acknowledging that, in practice, these metrics may not always be used in isolation for assessment. Recommendations for practice and generalizability across various government regimes and public KPIs are provided.