Public service technical officers yesterday completed a five-day course in monitoring and evaluation and were charged to use learned concepts to ensure the better functioning of the various ministries in which they work.
“This is an investment…we want to give the people value for money…we are relying on you to be part of that process …to ensure Guyanese people get value for money,” Junior Finance Minister Juan Edghill told participants at the conclusion of the workshop yesterday.
The programme, funded by the Ministry of Finance, saw technical officers from seven government
ministries being trained by Dr Ray Rist of the International Programme for Development Evalua-tion Training (IPDET) on benefits of the use of evidence-based data for decision-making.
Participants explained how the programme would help their specified ministries.
Ward Officer at the Georgetown Public Hospital Shivanne Ramkarran told of how she will now go back to her job focusing on infection control for infants, an area she bypassed monitoring before. She said the workshop taught her the importance of tracking progress of the infants during and after their stay at the hospital. As such, she said, she will create a database so that there is statistical evidence as she monitors infants over a period of time.
As a result of the programme, another officer attached to the Ministry of Education is planning to implement a database system to track the progress of students when she her department’s budget next year. This way, she said, strongpoints and problems can be identified and appropriate action taken in budgetary distribution.
A Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) representative explained that while her ministry boasts of the amount of homes distributed, it never made note of the outcomes and impacts of those distributions. This, she said, will be an area she will discuss with relevant personnel that should be implemented. “How do we know that the communities are benefiting from what we do?” she questioned. She subsequently informed that the monitoring and evaluation exercise at CH&PA will be in the future geared to focus not just on output but evidence-based outcomes, hence achieving effective and accurate measuring of goals.
Edghill made reference to the Auditor General’s findings of millions of dollars in drugs that have to be dumped because of expiration. “There is no shortage of money where drugs are concerned but there are shortages of drugs…so there is a big disconnect between the allocation and the delivery,” he said.
To this end, he charged participants to make use of all that they would have learned over the five-day period and bring empirical evidence when they are lobbying for a project or as they serve the nation.
