Sustainability KPIs in the Public Sector: A Bibliometric Review

Integrating sustainability into public sector performance management systems is an important measure of public financial management reforms, enabling public institutions to align financial objectives with social, environmental, and governance objectives for the purpose of monitoring and evaluating institutional performance.

The research aims to answer three questions: what are the dominant themes regarding the integration of sustainability through key performance indicators in the public sector, how is recent literature structured around the main thematic clusters, and to what extent do these directions support the development of an integrated conceptual performance framework for public financial management.

The article proposes an integrated framework of key performance indicators adapted to the public sector, built by extending the principles of the strategic performance management framework and integrating environmental, social, and governance criteria. The results highlight three main thematic clusters: the integration of environmental, social, and governance criteria into public performance systems, the role of management accounting and controlling in sustainable governance, and the development of digital tools for monitoring key sustainability performance indicators. The analysis indicates a marked convergence between reforms in public financial management and sustainability reporting, with implications for transparency, accountability, and decision-making efficiency. The conclusions support the need for a transition from traditional budgetary control to strategic controlling oriented towards sustainability.

The study contributes by systematising recent literature and presenting an integrated model of key sustainability performance indicators for the public sector.

The proposed KPI framework is conceptual and exploratory in nature, based on bibliometric analysis and recent literature, without being empirically validated through application in a specific public institution. At the same time, the bibliometric nature of the study represents a methodological limitation, as the results depend on the selection criteria of the databases and the structure of the analysed corpus.