The possibility of having efficient systems for monitoring and evaluating public management outcomes will not materialize without trustworthy and opportune national systems for the production and dissemination of statistical data. Nor is it relevant to have a quality statistical supply without a design, monitoring and evaluation system that enables users to make evidence-based decisions. The quality, opportunity and cost-effectiveness of results-based management systems linked to the national development plans shall be as sound as the statistical base in which they are rooted may allow. To reinforce the national statistical systems becomes a necessary condition to build their strength. There are significant advances in the region aimed at building governmental monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems; however, the link between such systems and the production of national statistical systems has been week. To strengthen this link becomes one of the most pressing challenges for increasing public management efficiency.
Limited Progress in Results-Based Management In recent years, the governmental management evaluation systems have been strengthening the links with national development plans, particularly, poverty reduction strategies, and efforts are being made to generate adequate systems to complement the public management decentralization at regional and local levels. Efforts are also being made to reinforce the links between public investment evaluation systems and the budgetary management system, with the goal to achieve the results-based budget desired. Due to the vulnerability of the current information base, advances are limited in the following aspects: - positioning the results-based management to act as a guide for the governmental initiatives, endowed with the characteristics of a modern and efficient public management;
- reinforcing the links with the national development plans;
- integrating the monitoring and evaluation systems of regional and local governments; and
- linking the allocation of resources to the outcomes.
To measure results effectively, such measurement must be based on quality, timely, ongoing, wide-coverage and cost-effective statistical data.
Potential Synergies between NSDS and M&E Systems The design of M&E systems should be jointly developed with the national statistical system, defining a consensual effort to systematically improve the information base needed to implement the M&E system in a cost-effective and sustainable manner. This joint effort requires from the National Statistical Office the effective coordination of an active network of producers and users of information. The foreseen outcomes of a National Strategy for the Development of Statistics are, for instance, time series of education and health administrative records, with: - high quality control standards;
- disaggregated by area of residence, ethnicity, disability status, municipality, neighborhood;
- with annual periodicity;
- comparable and “combinative” with census data, probabilistic maps that combine household surveys and censuses, and other administrative records related to the economic and public services activities;
- easily accessible on line; and
- a broad, active and technically-capable community of users.
This scenario would translate into a system of learning for designing public policies, based on relevant, credible and cost-effective impact evaluations. The statistical work should be regarded as a highly significant cross-sectional process of public management. Similarly to the State’s public service, acquisition process and financial management, the output of statistical data is a crucial part of the process for formulating public policies, and determines –to a large extent- their effectiveness.
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