LAHORE: Punjab government’s project for analysing the public’s perception in order to improve governance appears to have failed miserably due to the poor performance and irregular planning of the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) and Information and Culture (I&C) department.
The project titled ‘Citizen Engagement and Public Perception Analysis for Improving Governance and Service Delivery in Punjab 2013-18’ was started with the aim of developing a mechanism to understand the public’s opinion on various issues in order to evaluate public sector programmes.
The project had multifold benefits, including the provision of a direct interface between the citizens and the state in order to enable the citizen to voices their concerns directly to the policymakers and implementers.
As per the monitoring report of the project issued by Directorate General Monitoring and Evaluation (DGM&E), there is no record of achievements on the project by the I&C department.
Sharing its observations about the project, the report states, “The scheme was initially approved for 24 months with a cost of Rs60 million, which was revised to Rs460, and gestation period was changed to 60 months (June 2018). As per PC-IV, the total expenditure was Rs78.24 million. The project was initially executed by I&C department, but later the project was transferred to PITB. Rs42 million were spent by I&C department while Rs36.24 million were spent by PITB. However, details and achievements of Rs42 million spent by I&C department were not shared with the evaluation team. As per PC-II a steering committee under the chairmanship of chairman P&DB was notified on October 1, 2016. But after notification there were no meeting records of this committee. The list of projects to be surveyed was not part of PC-II, however, in committee notification eight projects were mentioned.”
“In the summary sent to chief minister, it was written that the approximate cost of the survey for a sample size of 15,000 people was Rs2.2 million. However Rs23.282 million were paid to consultancy firms for three surveys and Rs12.59 million were paid to contract staff hired by PITB which accumulates to Rs35.87 million. So, the cost of each survey was Rs11.96 million on average. It needs to be justified by department why the cost is approximately six times that of the estimate in the summary sent to the chief minister,” the report added.
The report further states, “It was also written in the summary to the chief minster that PITB will conduct 20 surveys. However, only three surveys were conducted. There is no documentary evidence on how the feedback loop was established and how steering committee and project team coordinated on feedback and its implementation status. It was the responsibility of the project staff to produce briefs, essay, articles for analysis and publications but no such documents were shared. The final reports shared by consultancy firm seemed descriptive presentations rather than reports.”
“The project was not well-planned in terms of what sectors and projects would be surveyed and how would the coordination among them be handled. Similarly, the execution of the project also failed to answer these questions. I&C department did not share any information neither with the evaluation team nor with PITB. The justification for the revision of project was not given in PC-II,” the report added.
The DGM&E also ranked the project as ‘not successful’ and recommended that “PITB should take get the details about Rs42 million spent by I&C department”.
“Also any reports or out produced by I&C department should be handed over to PITB. The cost of the survey should not be six times of the purposed costs. The role and responsibilities of concerned departments should be part of PC-II and a complete work flow should be designed for public feedback and implementation status, so the aim of surveys can be achieved. The project staff should produce documents which are part of their job description. These documents should be presented to concerned stakeholders and if needed should be published in the print media. Project stakeholders, projects to be surveyed, coordination among departments should be well-defined and documented at project concept level and if not then at least project team should document it during the execution of the project,” the report concluded.
