Transparency and accountability are among the major attributes of a government in a democratic system. Apart from ensuring transparency and accountability, the government should also ensure due effectiveness and efficiency in delivering its responsibility to the public.
By efficiently and effectively delivering its responsibilities, the government can ensure socioeconomic and political advancement of the public and win their trust.
As part of such efforts, the government has been applying various tools of executing its plans. Among these are the balanced scored card (BSC). Despite their contribution in planning and measuring performance, many government offices had displayed poor performance in satisfying the needs of the public.
For example, many institutions failed to deliver their responsibilities as per the set standard. Others also failed to deliver service efficiently. Still others strived to submit fake performance reports which caused grievance and dissatisfaction of the public.
Under such circumstances, the House of Peoples Representatives (HPR), the organic in charge of supporting the plan and performance of institutions have, especially during the past few years strived to apply mechanisms to control the activities of the government offices as per their plan and performance.
The government should also demonstrate its responsibility and commitment to discharge its pledges through innovative ways of implementation.
It is also easy to the public, political parties and all concerned sides to monitor as well as evaluate the plan and performance of the government.
Ever since Ethiopia started to implement reform, the government has also started to apply a new method of planning. This planning is known as 100 days plan. Accordingly government offices set their plans for 100 days and perform likewise.
The plan is content-based and is contributing in boosting work efficiency and performance of government sectors, according to National Planning and Development Commission.
The 100 days plan is more effective in plan preparation, convenient for work implementation and evaluation comparing than previous systems of planning and reporting.
So far offices have implemented three rounds of 100 days plans and proved effective, the commission noted. As it gives due attention for short-term works to finalize in every 100 days, evaluated every 100 days by the executive body, focus on key core activities of the sector.
In addition to appreciating the government’s efforts so far to ensure better governance, it is also important to cascade the tool to the lower hierarchies in due course so that the institutions with immediate contact to the grassroots can serve the public better and bring about sustainable change.
The Ethiopian Herald June 1/2019
