In 2001, British PM Tony Blair made four campaign promises: education, health, crime and transport. After winning the election, Tony Blair created the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit (PMDU) to monitor progress on the four key campaign promises.
In 2009, the Malaysian government established the Performance Management & Delivery Unit (PEMANDU) to undertake two programmes: the Government Transformation Program (GTP) and the Economic Transformation Program (ETP).
PMDU and PEMANDU were both dependent on key performance indicators or KPIs. Ministerial KPIs ‘evaluate the success of a ministry or a particular activity within the ministry’. Ministerial performance measurement is the “process of quantifying the efficiency and effectiveness of past [ministerial] actions.” In other words, ministerial performance measurement ‘estimates the parameters under which ministerial actions are reaching the targeted results.’
Ministerial KPI management is a scientific undertaking. To begin with, KPIs “serve two purposes: communicate what is important and what the expected level of performance is.” Remember: there are three goals: improving delivery of essential public services, raising the standard of living of citizens and wealth creation.
The first step is to come up with the right ministerial KPIs – both qualitative and quantitative. Remember: ‘what gets measured gets done’. Ministerial performance measurement is both an art and a science. For every ministry we need to develop an ‘explicit set of goals’ followed by a specific strategy to measure performance.
The Ministry of Finance, for instance, should have an ‘explicit set of goals’ that could include the current account deficit (CAD), the fiscal deficit and national debt. The Ministry of Energy’s ‘explicit set of goals’ could include line losses, recovery percentage and circular debt. The Ministry of Railways should be measuring the number of passengers carried, freight carried and gross earnings/losses.
The mission statement of the Ministry of Finance in Singapore states: “To create a better Singapore through Finance.” The vision statement is: “A forward looking Ministry of Finance that advances leading ideas, drives synergies across government and ensures fiscal prudence.
All the ministries should set a five-year target with quarterly, biannual and annual performance benchmarks. Once again, ‘what gets measured gets done’. The performance monitoring system, including the performance measures and the data supporting them, should be evaluated periodically.
Imagine: ministerial performance measurement was first introduced back in the late 1970s (not in Pakistan). Will our ministers be required to submit to KPIs? Will there be regular ministerial KPI reports to parliament? Pakistani voters must be provided with material so that they can judge how seriously our ministers take their ‘actual jobs versus their political careers’.
Yes, we need performance-based leadership. Our ministers “should be required to articulate their goals for their portfolios and report publicly and formally on their progress…explaining to us [Pakistanis]…the relationship between what they said they would do and what they actually did.”
The writer is the government’s spokesperson on economy and energy issues.
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