Over the last decade there has been a dramatic expansion in use of non-financial performance measures for government organizations. Often, governments have limited themselves to what may be called "performance measurement"--Choosing measures and reporting performance against them. In this situation, the words typically associated with the effort are "accountability" and "transparency. " Political overseers are made aware of performance, and may then react based on a judgment about whether performance is good or bad. Other times, government organizations have gone beyond measurement to "performance management" -- using measures as a tool to improve performance along dimensions measured, not just record performance levels assumed to be unchanging. The basic idea is that various non-financial performance measures serve as a role analogous to the profit measure in firms for encouraging better performance. Performance management is thus seen as a potentially power tool to remedy underperformance in government.