Despite resistance by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) is determined to go ahead with evaluation of the performance of Ministers every quarter. What’s more, the process will have an expert touch, with the State party chief consulting the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) on how to go about it.
KPCC president G. Parameshwara said he would soon start the process of framing guidelines and criteria for the assessment. “I will seek the assistance of IIMB experts and other professionals involved in management and public policy. Nobody knows on what criteria the Ministers can be assessed. So guidelines have to be framed first,” he said.
Other States
He said he had learnt that such a system of assessment had been done in some other States. “I will also study their model of assessment and then get the questionnaire prepared,” he said.
He said the assessment would broadly be based on the Ministers’ efforts in implementing programmes that were promised in the Congress manifesto and his or her involvement with people.
Method of evaluation
G. Ramesh, chairperson of the Centre for Public Policy at IIMB, said Ministers’ performance should be evaluated on policy and governance levels. “For example, it could look at whether the Minister has made any institutional and system changes such as Bescom’s open governance policy,” he said.
“The evaluation should also be based on Ministers’ resource mobilisation and resource deployment. There are many departments that do not spend the budgetary allocations... Also, the evaluation can look at whether the Minister has brought about innovation in any aspect such as effective service delivery or not,” Prof. Ramesh said.
Asserting that the first quarter could only be on “baseline of performance,” Prof. Ramesh said, “Things such as whether the Minister has started the process of recruitment and capacity building in his or her department or not should also be looked at.”
Rajeev Gowda, who formerly headed the Centre for Public Policy, said the move to evaluate Ministers’ performance was good as people want a government that delivers.
At the national level, the Prime Minister’s ‘Performance monitoring and evaluation system for government departments’ was working well, Mr. Gowda added.
