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Promises to keep

Syed Akhtar Mahmood
THE political parties announced their election manifestos with much fanfare. One wanted to change the country, another to save it When the manifestos were announced, there was one question on most people's minds: Will the parties really deliver on their promises if they are elected?
We do not know the answer but this much we know, if we want them to deliver, we have to hold them accountable. And, for this we need a system for monitoring and evaluation - monitoring the implementation of the promised actions and evaluating the impact of these.
There is another reason why we need such a system. Many of the promises are expressed in general terms, such as "freeing the education sector of political influence" (BNP) or "creation of a digital Bangladesh" (AL). Noble goals, no doubt. But how will one achieve these?
Ministers often get away with, broker),, promises because their commitments are-expressed in vague and rhetorical terms.
Accountability thus requires a system for converting vague, general promises to precise indicators that can be monitored. What are the specific actions that will need to be taken, and in what sequence? A good monitoring system helps unbundle the general objectives into specific monitorable actions.
Monitorable indicators could be used for more than just checking on government promises. These could be used more generally to evaluate progress in implementing government programs and projects and their development impact
Consider, for example, a think-tank or other academic institution funded by public money. Rarely do we ask if these institutions are giving society good value for its money and doing what they are supposed to do.
Of course, monitoring project implementation is not easy; even more difficult is evaluating project impact. Nonetheless, it is worthwhile to develop monitorable indicators because the exercise itself could help clarify thinking on how projects may be designed. This means monitoring is not a
thing you leave for the future. You think about monitoring right at the beginning, when you design a project or a program.
Organisations who regularly use performance indicators have found it useful to distinguish between four types of indicators: input, output, outcome and impact indicators. An example will clarify the relevance of each indicator and the distinction between them. Consider the yearly budgetary exercise. Across the globe, finance ministers often point to budgeted expenditures on the "socially-important" items, such as education and health, as indicative of their government's commitment to social causes. More sophisticated finance ministers go further and focus on particular categories of social sector expenditures, such as primary education and public health. They then try to show that these expenditures constitute a significant portion of the budget and/or are rising over time.
Do all these necessarily mean that the government has attached top priority to education and health? No, it does not A finance minister who makes such a claim is only partially correct. There is more to this than jus t putting aside money in the budget This is better understood if we apply the four indicators mentioned above.
Let us begin by asking the all-important question: Why do we argue for an increase in expenditures in the social sectors? It is not the expenditures per se that is important but what we hope to achieve through these expenditures. This brings us to a critical, but oft-neglected, dimension of any government program or project; i.e. its objectives. Why are we doing what we are doing? For example, why do we argue for financial sector reforms? What is wrong with the financial sector as it is and what do we intend to achieve through the reforms?
For the full version of this artide please read this month's Forum, available free with The Daily Star on Monday, February 2.
Syed Akhtar Mahmood is an economist