As always, the bean counters and politicians sit in their offices and make the rules, getting promotion by dreamning up schemes with names like Orcon. (I have searched, unsucessfully for the origin of the word Orcon. Is it maybe a contraction of the phrase 'trick or con'?) The problem with the system is, as has been noticed in education, if you rely solely on hitting performance targets, then you will create an organisation which is very good at doing just that, hitting targets. The performance standards become the goal in themseleves instead of an indication of how well an organisation is really performing. The tail wags the dog.