State keeping track of public bodies’ service delivery
THE Government has developed several mechanisms to monitor and evaluate ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), as part of its Service Excellence Programme.
The programme aims to improve service delivery with a focus on the quality of outputs and customer satisfaction.
Since launching the Service Excellence Policy in July 2022 the Office of the Cabinet, through the Public Sector Modernisation Division (PSMD), has strengthened its partnership with MDAs to implement the programme throughout the public sector.
Speaking during a recent Jamaica Information Service (JIS) Think Tank at the agency’s head office in Kingston, Senior Director, PSMD, Danielle Jones Cox said through the mechanism, entities provide the Cabinet Office with quarterly reports on their progress.
“There is an officer assigned at the Cabinet Office who pulls all of the ministries’ quarterly reports together and creates a whole-of-government reporting document. That document is then shared with all of the permanent secretaries and heads of entities that are currently a part of our programme,” she said.
Cox explained that the process entails significant checking, hand-holding and reporting.
“But that is the mechanism through which we are keeping that touch point with our ministries,” she added.
The senior director noted that the quarterly reports not only highlight the positives and accomplishments, but also the pitfalls.
“The importance of highlighting pitfalls is not because we are rapping a ministry on the knuckles for not doing as they had intended to or as we had planned but [rather] it’s because we know that when we don’t get it right, we need to fix it,” she informed.
Cox pointed out that staff members of the Office of the Cabinet work closely with ministries on their established service improvement plans that have “a series of targets which go quarter by quarter for about three fiscal years”.
“A project lead is on the ground so that person is there to troubleshoot when the issues arise and have been identified in the reporting. We want to see them so we can problem-solve and troubleshoot,” she further stated.
