ADDIS ABABA- Technology and Innovation Institute is planning to launch an indicative survey program aimed at improving the manner ministries and state agencies gather data and statistics.
In an age where developing countries like Ethiopia are urged to harness the benefits associated with the data revolution, which is the gathering of data and statistics to track progress and make sure their decisions are evidence-based, the project is believed to be timely.
Institute Director General Sandokan Debebe told The Ethiopian Herald that it is a big project that aims at helping the government track progress made at the executive level, and strengthen accountability. We are in an age where actual figure is crucial to make sure decisions and policies are evidence-based, he added.
“‘If you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it’”. Further elaborating, he said that indicator is only embedded in science alone, as other sectors such agriculture, health, education have indicators of their own. “For instance, when it is said that the agriculture has shown growth in some specific period, it must be backed by specific and detailed indicators that show or correspond to the said growth in that specific time.”
To this end, the Director General continued to say, the indicators that are needed to evaluate the performance of various sectors will be presented before the body that oversee the respective sectors, and information will be started to be gathered around those indicators. He added that the system bar of the indicators will go and up down in correspondence with the data they are feed by the offices.
“We have already completed building the system platform, and the concept note that would explain the workings of the program to the relevant bodies”, Sandokan noted. As the program aims is closely concerned to the Parliament (as a body that oversee the executive branch), he opines; “we are preparing to the present the idea to them, as it would support the standing committees in their function of reviewing state agencies in their subject areas more thoroughly, effectively and easily.”
It has so many benefits, even to adjust, draft policies, as it collects data that can serve as baseline that pinpoints the realities on the ground, Sandokan explains. Mohammed Rafi, Public Relations Director with the Institute, for his part said that in addition to providing feedback input to policy and strategy formulation, the indicators will serve as a management tool to help countries develop implementation strategies and allocate resource accordingly.
Moreover, he said that the indicators provide similar standard thematic parameters used by UN to rank countries to measure the country’s economy.
The Ethiopian Herald, January 9/2019
BY ROBEL YOHANNES
