Performance evaluation system soon

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Taking a cue from countries like UK, New Zealand and Malaysia, the State Planning and Economics Affairs Department is set to evaluate the performance of all government departments in Kerala.This means that all ministers and departments will become more accountable as a quantitative analysis with points on performance of their respective departments, will be put on the public domain after each fiscal.“Kerala is the first state in the country to introduce a comprehensive performance monitoring and evaluation system, Results Framework Document (RFD), which was given to all departments last September. The first review meeting will be held in April and after tabulating the performance for the financial year, marks will be awarded to each department out of a total of 100. This system will make each minister and department heads more accountable,’’ said  Subrata Biswas, Secretary, State Planning and Economic Affairs Department.RFD provides a summary of the most important results that a department expects to achieve during the financial year.The marks will be presented in a five-point scale - Excellent = 100 per cent - 96 per cent Very Good = 95 per cent - 86 per cent, Good = 85 per cent - 76 per cent, Fair = 75 per cent - 66 per cent, Poor = 65 per cent and below.Biswas said that RFD would shift the focus of the department from process-orientation to result-orientation and provide a basis  to evaluate the overall performance of departments at the end of the year.“What is now being practised is evaluation of departments based on spending. Under the new system, the overall performance of each department will be evaluated. An ad hoc committee of the Union Government will be conducting a third party evaluation in April,’’ he said.Kerala State Planning Board vice-chairman K M Chandrashekar told ‘Express’ that the basic concept of such performance monitoring is to make each department more proactive.“Usually officials tend to be reactive. A performance evaluation system will make them proactive. In the beginning of every year, they will be asked to list the objectives that the department wants to carry out. At the end of the year, the performance will be evaluated after discussions by an expert panel comprising  of academics, management experts and  resource persons,’’ he said.He said that every three months the departments will be asked to review their objectives as outside factors like a financial crisis can play a role in governance.