Government’s move to implement the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Unit has been welcomed in Parliament.
However, Opposition MP Jone Usamate has cautioned that flawed indicators in the current National Development Plan could undermine the unit’s effectiveness.
Speaking in Parliament on Monday, Mr Usamate flagged what he believed was a fundamental weakness in the plan that the MEL Unit was meant to support.
“One of the weaknesses with the current development plan, if you look at the write-up of certain sections and the indicators that are supposed to measure, there is a mismatch,” Mr Usamate said.
“So, if you have the wrong indicators, then you will be assessing wrong.”
“On the basis of this, monitoring and evaluation is very important, I’m just asking about the capacity of the people to understand, to be able to carry out a level of evaluation and monitoring, especially when looking at impact and outcomes, which are very broad in nature.”
In response, Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka acknowledged the concerns, recalling earlier efforts to embed outcome-based governance into the public service.
“A few years back, we had the SFCCO in the Office of the Prime Minister, but somehow it was taken away as well,” he said, referring to the Strategic Framework for Change Coordinating Office that once played a central role in government monitoring.
“And in last year’s budget, I talked about outcome-based budgeting, this is a step in the right direction.”
