Country needs to implement a strategic plan
The President, while delivering his policy statement for the country declared his expectations in achieving some targets for key economic activities. Major economic activities that he covered in his speech, among other things, included agriculture, industries, tourism, trade and port services, digitalisation, technology, energy and manpower planning. However, no one has emphasised how we are going to achieve these targets or what steps we are going to follow to achieve them.
The President’s expectations needs to be achieved through the work of internal institutional framework and employees. A plan with targets for everybody will give us a macroeconomic plan. In other words, we need a Strategic Plan (SP) to achieve the targets declared by the President. Private sector stakeholders have corporate plans setting the targets and explaining the actions they are going to implement to achieve targets during a given period of time.
A SP is basically a rolling plan for a given period of time (i.e. normally for a year within a three or five year plan) explaining the targets, mechanisms and a set of performance indicators to measure the extent of achievements expected from given functions of the institutions and employees. In the past, Sri Lanka had several national plans expecting to achieve some macroeconomic targets but they were not SPs. We had a 10-year plan, a six-year plan and a five-year plan which attempted to achieve some macroeconomic targets by different governments. Governments tried to achieve these macroeconomic targets but failed due to various reasons. At present, the government has no explicit plans as such to achieve macroeconomic targets but they are in the minds of the authorities. A SP is not merely a macroeconomic plan; it is a comprehensive framework with strategies and specified mechanisms to evaluate the performance of functions assigned to each institutions and employees. In the process of strategic planning, a mechanism is built to monitor the level of performances. Hence, a SP provides the opportunity to take corrective actions when deviations from the expected outcomes of functions assigned to each institution and employee are observed. It goes beyond the government’s annual budget which is currently the only plan available to achieve macroeconomic targets.
The government sector is often assumed to be inefficient; however, its actions have a significant impact on the entire socio-economic landscape of the country. At present, Sri Lanka has 24 Ministries. Under these Ministries there are 462 Departments and Statutory Bodies. For all of these institutions 784 functions have been clearly identified. Further, these institutions have to implement nearly 465 Laws, Acts and Ordinances in the country.
This framework encompasses all activities of the public sector. The macroeconomic targets set by the President must be achieved by the activities of this institutional set up and with the support of the private sector. It is essential to align the activities of all of these institutions within a single workable SP to ensure successful results. Each institution must be assigned a specific part of work based on the overall targets. Clearly, each institution has a defined role to play in the macroeconomic plan (National Plan). Finally, after identifying the part of the work to be attended by each institution, the part of the work to be assigned to each Section, Division and Employee of the institution has to be decided and assigned. In this way, the overall responsibilities of stakeholders in achieving a single goal (target) expected from the Ministries can be allocated to grassroot level, i.e., each division and each employee. This clearly defines the role of each worker within the institution. It paves the way to eliminate any redundant positions. This prevents worker idleness. Everyone is happy as everyone is a partner of the macro plan. As a result, it will contribute to create worker happiness and minimise grievances thus leading to less industrial disputes.
Planners have to develop and identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the level of performance of each function and goal. For instance, one of the President’s expectations is to increase IT professionals to 200,000 a year from the presently available number of 80,000. If this is the goal for the Education Ministry, after identifying the functions (activities) to achieve this target it needs to develop relevant KPIs to measure the outcome of the function. It may be increasing the number of student intake to universities, increasing the number trained by vocational training institutions, or increasing the number recruited to identified institutions etc. KPIs may have a specified timeframe for completion, i.e, within a year or within two years etc. if the indicator is region specific, planners must determine the allocation for each region, for example, how many from Colombo, how many from Galle etc. There may be a number of associated activities required to achieve this target. All of these activities must be identified and measurable indicators need to be developed to track the progress.
Another important task of strategic planning is monitoring the performance of activities. Monitoring process may occur every three months, six months or at another appropriate interval. If any deviations are identified, corrective actions must be taken. For instance, taking the above example, if the target of IT trainee professionals from Colombo district is not met, remedial actions should be implemented to correct it. This way it is required to monitor the performance continuously and take corrective actions until we reach the expected target.
This is the approach I believe should be taken to develop a SP for the entire government sector. It could serve as a strategy to achieve success in plans. Some may view this as a challenging task. However, in my experience all negative thoughts can be overcome once we get into the job. There have been many institutions that initially had doubts towards strategic planning but may have succeeded having workable SPs for their institutions. The Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CB) was one of the institutions that initially faced difficulties in designing a SP. However, now it has a successful, well-defined SP that started in 2008. At present, there is a Department in the CB, called Policy Review and Monitoring Department (PRMD) which is dedicated for its Strategic Planning and Monitoring work. It always has a 3-5 year plan for CB’s operations which is reviewed and updated for the forthcoming year. Through one-on-one meetings, it monitors the activities of the SP on a quarterly basis and maintains a success rate of 95-98 per cent. The government’s plans for digitalisation and IT developments can also be integrated into its Strategic Planning process. Many problems relating to Institutions, Divisions, Employees, Regions, and timelines within the Strategic Planning can be effectively addressed through these IT developments.
Having a SP will have many advantages. It is a way to collectively achieving macro-economic targets. It may reduce many employer-employee disputes providing efficient worker evaluation mechanism. Worker satisfaction may increase while improving their skills. It is to change grassroot level culture of doing something in the office to doing everything of the SP thus creating a fully functional workforce at every level. It may avoid waste of resources. It may help educational reforms and thus designing a mechanism for manpower planning. It provides an easy top-bottom, bottom-top way of communicating. It enhances transparency in activities. It involves the application of state-of-the-art technology for planning, as seen in many other countries.
The Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development has a National Planning Department and it can undertake the activities to develop a SP for the state sector. Since all functions of the Ministries and Departments have now been identified, designing a practical SP for the state sector should be easier. The next step is to develop an appropriate mechanism to monitor activities of the SP, after establishing a set of relevant KPIs and a mechanism to assign already identified functions to the grassroot level. The Ministries can delegate the task of preparing strategies and setting targets for grassroot level staff to other stakeholders engaged at the bottom level. Time is running out, and we must begin implementing Strategic Planning process soon if we are to achieve success in our macroeconomic targets. It is a required measure towards uplifting the living conditions of the people.
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