Practitioners and researchers have been pursuing ways to improve the effectiveness of the evaluation practice of local governments in Japan, but such efforts remain unfulfilled. Comparative performance measurement, or benchmarking, which was developed in the United States, is regarded as a prospective method to provide local government evaluation with new possibilities. Over 160 municipalities participate in the ICMA's Comparative Performance Measurement Program, which is the most prominent benchmarking project in the United States. The participating municipalities benefit from the large membership, making it possible for them to compare their performance with that of the most relevant participating municipalities. Benchmarking, by enabling municipalities to introduce an additional object of comparison, makes current performance measurement practice more meaningful. This is especially true in Japan where there is less diversity among municipalities than in the United States. As a result, benchmarking among municipalities in Japan may be more suitable. Moreover, benchmarking is done with relatively small cost because municipalities that have already introduced performance measurement systems do not have to change or modify their systems when they start benchmarking. To make benchmarking efforts effective enough, however, participation of many municipalities, the intervention of an expert organization and a firm foundation of funds is necessary.

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Local government benchmarking, or performance-comparison projects in local government will play an important role in the local government management of Japan. Since local government benchmarking and social indicators that compare regions have many methodological points in common, they are called comparative performance measurement (CPM) in combination. In CPM efforts, comparability of the indicators used for comparison is a matter of crucial importance. This article classifies the method of comparison in CPM and discusses the problems and applicability of various methods of standardization and adjustment from the viewpoint of comparability in comparing organizational performance. Special attention is paid to the scale types of measures. This article also reports findings from a study on the indicators generated by various CPM projects.

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The Municipal Evaluation Consortium was formed seven years ago to break the impasse that municipalities in Japan had been facing in their evaluation practice. Since the Consortium was established its membership has grown from fifteen cities to eighty. Activities of the Consortium now include the calculation of deviation values for twenty public service areas and the provision of analysis results, called karte, for each participating municipality.
In the analytic approach adopted by the Consortium, the following four types of performance measures are used; basic measures that represent the circumstances involving public services, results measures that reflect the results of public services and activities, outcome measures that show the degree to which citizens respond to or utilize public services and activities, and cost measures. The effectiveness of employing such measures is recognized by many public officials and employees involved in the Consortium.
In this article, the families of measures developed by the Consortium are presented for the following public service areas; adult health examination service, long-term care insurance projects, library service, community center administration and operation, fire and emergency service, garbage collection and disposal, and gender equality programs.
The analysis results, karte, that have been developed and refined by trial and error by the Consortium are explained. The cases where karte are effectively utilized are also presented. Finally, suggested improvements in public services and activities using benchmarking and further problems are discussed.

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Nineteen years have passed since the Kawanishi City introduced and managed the administrative evaluation in 1991. After repeated trial and errors, the creation of an administrative and fiscal management system based on the general plan for Kawanishi City has been achieved. Progress has been made in building a strong objective oriented sense in the staff to support the newly created system.
On the other hand, there it is still difficult to share and explore issues with citizens through discussions based on the results of evaluation. In this connection a public review meeting on administrative activities in July 2010 was organized as the first trial among the cities in the Hanshin area. The formulation of a general plan, the preparation of a budget and the visualization of these activities are important issues to consider.
Benchmarking is one interesting tool for handling these issues. The results of administrative evaluations are assessed as report cards of the local government. The administrative staff and citizens judge the appropriateness of the budget allocation and its execution through the analysis and disclosure of the results by comparing them with other cities and identifying its advantages and disadvantage. The possibilities of benchmarking are analyzing through the trial of Kawanish City.

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Fukui City introduced a performance measurement system in 1999. To support this system, Fukui City developed its own municipal benchmark system called Kurabe Jozu, as a result of trial and error. The Kurabe Jozu is a more useful outcome index because it accepts proposals from participating municipalities and compares existing indices from other municipalities for better municipal measures and operational improvement.
The problems and outcomes of Kurabe Jpzu are discussed in the body of this report through research projects following its operation process. The effectiveness of Kurabe Jozu is confirmed and this analysis suggests further improvements.

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The purpose of this research is to analyze the theories that derive self-interest based evaluators in the benchmarking of public administration, and to review the functional capability of benchmarking in the evaluation of public administration.
As a result, it was found that the collaboration of self-interest based evaluators in the evaluation of public administration was significant to acceleration and coordination from the viewpoint of the evaluation purpose and propensity. Moreover, it was recognized that threats to the evaluation implementation existed. This was caused by the head of the administration for the evaluation of public administration's ownership, which impeded the functions of the collaboration. Finally, the possibility of eliminating the threats to the evaluation and enhancing the utilization of benchmarking in public administration are considered.

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Policy evaluation was introduced in Japanese local governments starting in the mid-1990s. Although evaluation appears to be an established practice to certain extent now, staff in charge of evaluation continue to feel evaluation is a forced obligation and burdensome. To address these issues the author proposes Creative Policy Evaluation (CPE). In this investigation, CPE was introduced into administrative practice and its effects were verified through staff questionnaire. As a result of the introduction of CPE, a statistically significant difference in the comprehension of the purpose of evaluation, achievement of the logical thinking, derivation of the performance indicators, and discussions in the workplace in an evaluation process were seen. By analyzing the activeness of the discussion in an evaluation process by related factors it becomes clear that actiiveness in discussion is dependent on appropriate management of the discussion by the facilitator.

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Research on aid effectiveness has focused on the relationship between aid effectiveness and the governance of developing countries. However, no research shows the relationship between the effectiveness of Japanese ODA projects and governance measured by quantitative analysis. This study aims to clarify the influence of governance in developing countries on the effectiveness of JICA technical cooperation projects and on the sustainability of their effects. 181 projects intended to assist developing countries between 1998 and 2007 were examined. From regression analysis, it was found that the governance measured by Worldwide Governance Indicators did not have any significant explanatory power on project effectiveness, but was significantly related to the sustainability of project effects. The influence of the developing country's governance, economics and education on the effects of the project was also examined by covariance structure analysis. The study showed that governance, economics and education did not affect project effectiveness, but did promote the sustainability of project effects. It was also discosverd that governance indirectly influenced the sustainability of project effects through economics or education.

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