Wholeheartedly agree with Matt Andrews

If only all development organizations were required to provide background stories like these for the innovations they so easily reproduce everywhere. One wonders if ministers of finance in French speaking African countries would so willingly agree to Medium Term Expenditure Framework reforms if they knew where these ideas came from (select advanced Anglophone countries like Australia), what kind of process MTEFs emerged from in these settings, what kind of political context they demand, what capacities they require etc. Ditto for just about every good, better or best practice one can think of. We need more of what ISS is providing: materials to help theorize what makes a best or innovative practice best or innovative and to assist us in thinking about whether these practices fit into new contexts...or what will be required to facilitate the fit. Visit their web site at http://www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties/

Dashboards are only tools: effectiveness depends on their use

A new report for the IBM Center by Dr. Sukumar Ganapati, “Using Dashboards in Government” provides a snapshot into the internal and external uses of dashboards as ways of monitoring performance and providing accountability and transparency in large organizations. Ganapati says: “Dashboards summarize key performance metrics of organzations. They typically integrate data from different sources and display performance measures through informative graphics. The visualization allows readers to understand complex data in less time than it would take to read similar material ocated in the text of a full report.

He says there are different types of dashboards: operational (for monitoring in real time such as call centers or air traffic control); tactical (for analysis and benchmarking such as welfare caseload processing); and strategic (such as balanced scorecards of agency performance).

Source: Using Dashboards in Government

The Singapore Way

Source:McKinsey report: How the world's best performing school systems come out on top

Related:

If Singapore has one thing to teach America, it is about taking governing seriously, relentlessly asking: What world are we living in and how do we adapt to thrive. “We’re like someone living in a hut without any insulation,” explained Tan Kong Yam, an economist. “We feel every change in the wind or the temperature and have to adapt. You Americans are still living in a brick house with central heating and don’t have to be so responsive.” And we have not been

Tony Blair on Deliverology

Blair talks about the Delivery Unit as one of his successes in his memoir and gives credit to Sir Machael Barber.

'It was relatively a small organizatiion, staffed by civil servants but also outsiders from McKinsey, Bain and other private sector companies, whose job was to track the delivery of key government priorities. It would focus like a laser on an issue, draw up a plan to resolve it working with the department concerned, and then performance-manage it to a solution. It would get first-class data which it would use for stocktakes that I took personally with the minister, his key staff and mine, every month or so. The unit would present a progress report and any necessary action would be authorised....

We also created the Strategy Unit, to look ahead at the way policy would devlop, the fresh challenges and new ideas to meet them. That also was higly successful. It allowed us to take a medium- and even long-term view of certain issues that were looming but not imminent. Whereas the Policy Unit handled the day-to-day and focused on managing the departments to produce the policies and their implementation that derived from the manifesto or the departmental plans, the Strategy Unit was trying to trying to construct the next policy platform...

In summary, extra money plus system change delivered results...'

Related:
Imported From Britain: Ideas to Improve Schools

“What have all the great school systems of the world got in common?” he said, ticking off four systems that he said deserved to be called great, in Finland, Singapore, South Korea and Alberta, Canada. “Four systems, three continents — what do they have in common?

“They all select their teachers from the top third of their college graduates, whereas the U.S. selects its teachers from the bottom third of graduates. This is one of the big challenges for the U.S. education system: What are you going to do over the next 15 to 20 years to recruit ever better people into teaching?”

Virginia Performs

Links to Agency Peformance Plans,

How to Praise a Finance Minister

"The observed resilience of the Mauritian economy is a testimony to the positive impact of the reforms carried out since 2006, which favoured economic diversification and adaptation at the same time that it created fiscal space for expansionary macroeconomic policies and other innovative, timely, temporary and targeted responses to cushion the crisis impact".

-World Bank, Mr Fabiano Bastos, quoted in the Budget Speech

Random thoughts on Improving PFM Technical Assistance

'The best solutions are those where international experience is judiciously mixed with local genius'-Suhas Joshi

Some more comments on Richard Allen's post about improving effectiveness of PFM TAs';

- I don't see any problems in moving towards what locals and advisers see as best practice; as long we consider that there are many recipes of 'best practice'

-TA reports should always start the dialogue, but how does one institutionalise discussion and follow up of TA reports on PFM? Which committees should be responsible, and at which level?

- Mr. Joshi also makes importance points in the comments-'countries therefore do not need large prescriptive reports but help is resolving the constraints they have'. I fully agree, 'it is more useful to have as a TA someone who understands the country and has spent some time there'

- One of the biggest problems I've seen are consultants who want to take you for a ride- this is a problem for assistance provided by some international donors who have weak internal expertise, exceptions include World Bank and IMF. Countries need to seriously think the donor they approach for reform PFM areas and whether they have a comparative advantage in them.

Putting Foreign Aid in Macro-Fiscal Frameworks

I found the following from the Mauritius budget call circular to be useful- putting aid into overall sectoral ceiling is really a feature of mature MTEF. Mauritius budget process is certainly very advanced.

Financial resources expected from development partners (grant or loan funding) have already been factored in the macro-fiscal framework used for working out spending limits and do not therefore constitute an additional source of funds available for spending.

For Discussion: How's foreign aid incorporated in MTEF's in other countries like Albania, which have mature MTEF's?

Related:
Albania- Albania Public Expenditure and Institutional Review 2001


REPIM

Iraq IFMIS to be operational in 2009

We are making progress in modernizing public financial management (PFM). The Board of Supreme Audit (BSA) has completed the audit of the final accounts of the federal budget for 2005 and the audit of the final accounts for 2006 is underway. We have submitted the final accounts of the federal budget for 2007 to the BSA in October. The audit reports will be submitted to the Council of Representatives and published. We have also adopted, in consultation with the Fund and the World Bank, a three-year action plan that identifies priority measures to modernize PFM, notably as regards budget preparation, execution and reporting; cash management; public procurement; cash management; and the accounting framework. We will step up our efforts to put in place, in cooperation with USAID, the renewed Iraq Financial Management Information System (IFMIS), in order to make this system fully operational in 2009.

14. We have completed about 25 percent of the data collection for the census of public service employees at end-October, but finalization of the project is being delayed due to technical problems. We will make all efforts to have the census completed by end-January 2009. After completion of the census we will move swiftly to eliminate ghost workers and adopt an action plan to computerize the payroll, as a first step for a comprehensive civil service reform. In parallel, the BSA has begun a project to verify the personnel records in line ministries, in order to clean up the existing payroll.

-Iraq: Letter of Intent and Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies

Related;

Integrated Financial Management Information Systems: A Practical Guide