As much a 20 per cent of grade seven students in Tanzania are unable to read in Kiswahili, and 50 per cent can’t read English. A recent report indicates that learning outcomes in India a declining and in rural Senegal, quack doctors appear to provide better clinical care than registered physicians. Can deliverology solve these problems, asks a recent contributor to the World Bank blog?
Deliverology is based on “the notion that traditional public-sector organizations are not geared towards delivering results—such as student learning outcomes or quality clinical care—for several reasons,” says Shanta Devarajan, who describes himself as a student of service delivery.
However, he says many organizations have far too many goals which frequently cannot be quantified. For goals that can be quantified, there is very little real-time data to monitor progress towards those goals.
“As a result, staff and management within the organization do not work towards these goals. Rather, they may try to maximize the size of their unit or the budget under their control,”says Devarajan.
With deliverology, a small, high-quality delivery unit typically reports directly to the head of the organization, that is charged with championing the delivery of a few, well-specified results The unit gathers real-time data, works with line managers to make mid-course changes, and establish routines so that leaders can review performance and make decisions, he explains.
However, Devarajan proposes the inclusion of two other factors:
The real clients – Such as households and children who will benefit from better service delivery
Politics – Devarajan uses the term to refer to “dysfunction in public sector organizations.” Such as “why are teachers absent about a quarter of the time in India and Uganda? Why are doctors absent about 40 percent of the time in India, or spending 29-39 minutes a day seeing patients in Senegal and Tanzania? “
“No matter how well the delivery unit is performing, it is difficult for the government agency to monitor teacher or doctor presence (let alone the quality of service provision) in remote rural area,” he says. “…In most cases, these technocratic solutions won’t work because teachers and doctors are powerful political forces in the community. Quite often, teachers run the campaigns of the local politicians, in return for which they get a job for which they don’t have to show up.”
To read more about Devarajan’s point of view, click on this link: http://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/deliverology-and-all
To learn more about deliverology, attend the Deliverology & Implementation breakfast event to be presented by the Canadian Government Executive and Dell/Softchoice on June 7th from 8:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. in the Borden Lardner Gervais LLP office at the Scotia Plaza Tower on 40 King St. West, Toronto.
You will hear from Craig Szelestowski, government transformation specialist and president of Lean Agility, about the strengths of weaknesses of the deliverology approach. Craig will tell you how you can adapt deliverology to suit your needs and enable your own organization to deliver the service and outcomes your clients want and energize your staff at the same time.
Learn about the latest developments in cloud computing, data analytics, storage and networking are impacting Canadian organizations from two of the top analysts of IDC Canada: Tony Olvet, group vice president for research; and David Senf, program vice president, of the company’s infrastructure solutions group.
If you want to be an agent of innovation and transformation in your organization, this is the event to attend.
To find out more and to register, click on this link.
