KINGSTON, Jamaica — Director General of the Planning Institute of Jamaica, Dr Wayne Henry has called on development practitioners to exercise accountability as this will advance the country towards achieving the national development goals as set out under Vision 2030 Jamaica.

Delivering the keynote address at the fifth edition of the Symposium of Best Practices that was recently streamed live from Kingston under the theme: Coordination: Working together for a better Jamaica, Dr Henry said, “Coordination, requires accountability — it requires that we establish strategic imperatives and performance measurements for determining the achievement of the objectives of coordination and partnerships.  It requires transforming our lessons learned and best practices into relevant and workable local models for the implementation, monitoring and evaluation and reporting on the effectiveness of coordination and partnerships.”

He further went on to highlight that a partnership must have utility value saying, “Partnership must be aligned to a defined function in the national development process and must be articulated within the framework for coordination.”

Following the successful alignment of Vision 2030 Jamaica to the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Dr Henry also cautioned that although Jamaica had made progress in the quality of coordination, there were many factors that had slowed the pace towards achieving goals under the national development plan. These, he said, include duplication of roles and responsibilities regarding governance and leadership; insufficient focus on the coordination of development efforts, including inadequate attention to coherence in the identification of strategic development priorities aligned with national level planning; and the allocation of resources based on these strategic priorities.

In addition, Dr Henry said that while fostering partnerships through consultation was essential there was the risk that stakeholder engagement and data collection can also lead to fatigue and inequity.

The PIOJ noted that geographical accessibility of communities and the quality of advocacy put forward by community leaders had an impact on the allocation of development resources.

The partners for the symposium with the PIOJ were the Ministry of National Security, the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Jamaica Diaspora Taskforce Action Network (JDTAN) and the Social Development Commission.