Executive Summary
Any successful business, organisation, or association uses management as its main function. Management includes four distinct categories, which are planning, organising, leading, andcontrolling. These four functions have different characteristics, but conjoined all of them form the qualities of a successful manager.
In recent years the public sector has increasingly been under pressure to improve performance driven by a number of central government initiatives such as the Best Value regime and Public Performance Reporting. Added to this pressure is the current Modernising Government agenda or what has become known as information age government or e-government. Ambitious targets have been set for electronic service delivery culminating in the goal that all services be available electronically by 2008 (Cabinet Office 1999). Public services do not have the same bottom line aims of the private sector in terms of profit maximisation but it is an over simplification to see the public sector as a pressure free environment. Internal markets and competitive funding have introduced business disciplines and there remains downward pressure on public expenditure and ever increasing statutory responsibilities. It is inevitable therefore that the pursuit of performance and value for money improvements will be linked to the e government agenda and the use of information technology (IT).
…