Management should be result oriented-Minister

Aug 20, 2015

Prof.Tarsis Kabwegyere, Minister for general duties, Office of the Prime Minister has called for an improved culture of management that is focused on achieving results.

By John Odyek

Prof.Tarsis Kabwegyere, Minister for general duties, Office of the Prime Minister has called for an improved culture of management that is focused on achieving results.

"We want service delivery to become a way of life. There should be regularity in the delivery of services," Kabwegyere said

The minister was closing the Uganda Community of Practise (Cop) on management for development results meeting at Speke Resort Munyonyo.

Cop is part of the African Community of Practise on Managing for Development Results (AfcoP-MfDR).

The Office of the Prime Minister and the African Development Bank early this year launched the Africa Community of Practise for Results (AfriK4R) initiative which seeks to help accelerate regional integration, effective public financial systems, facilitate trade and improve business on the continent.

The minister said the new initiative was expected to introduce a new culture of management in government where the focus would be on development results.

He said questions to be asked in the new initiative would include: "what have you achieved in the last 100 days. If we adopt this practice, development will speed up".

He criticized government systems for being too slow in acting, changing and delivery services.

The minister added that a delivery unit in the Office of the Prime Minister will be staffed with a team of professionals to support the Prime Minister and government to deal with service delivery constraints.

He said it will focus on programmes on health, education, energy, roads and the standard gauge railway.

“It will have powers to enforce delivery and execute sanctions and incentives for delivery," the minister said.

Timothy Lubanga, assistant commissioner monitoring and evaluation said the African Development Bank had an assessment tool that checks a country's readiness in managing for development results.

Lubanga said the assessment tool concentrates on six pillars namely strategic planning, results-based budgeting, leadership, accountability, statistical capacity and institutional capacity to deliver goods and services.

Jeremiah Mutonga, resident representative African Development Bank commended the government for demonstrating interests in the culture of achieving results.

Mutonga said management for development is a principle that will help countries achieve development.

Musoke Ssonko, senior economist, ministry of finance said the programme based budgeting approach would be applied in the 2015/16 budget.

Ssonko said the programme based budgeting approach delivers better outcomes, services and results than the current output-oriented budgeting.

"Programme budgeting shifts emphasis from inputs (activities) to outcomes, service delivery and results," Ssonko said.

James Muwonge, director socio-economic surveys, Uganda Bureau of Statistics said managing for results calls for investment in the statistical infrastructure to be able to measure ably the outcomes arising out of development initiatives.

Muwonge added that statistics supports the planning, monitoring and evaluation of national and international results based development agenda.

He said statistics provides the basis for determining what works and what does not work, but there was inadequate statistical infrastructure and funding from government.

Related to the story

Minister faults OPM top officials for indecisiveness


EAC integration a matter of life and death - Kabwegyere




(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});