Report on the State of Affairs of the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) after Five Years

[Introduction]. The public sector has to cope with a lot of challenges and has to respond to many new needs and demands in society. Due to these challenges and pressures, the public sector is subject to many reforms. "Over the last two decades there appears to have been a huge amount of public management reform. Although there was also reform in earlier periods, the changes since 1980 have – in many countries – been distinguished by an international character and a degree of political salience which marks them out from the more parochial or technical changes of the preceding quartercentury".1 These reforms introduce new principles. A growing focus on efficiency and effectiveness, attention to transparency and accountability, awareness of public service delivery. Together with these principles, methods and techniques were constructed, focusing on one of these principles or trying to combine them. Techniques like ‘management by objectives’, ‘cost benefit analysis’, ‘market testing’, ‘performance related pay’, ‘value for money’ were introduced.