DailyPost 2800
GOVERNANCE, EXECUTION & DELIVERY: DOES THE EXPERTISE ADD UP?
How do you match a job description, scope of work or project requirements for procurement, execution and delivery? Deliverables play the most crucial role, defined functionally and measured for quantification and to calculate the pace of progress. The main concern is that no detail is missed or remains outside of execution, so as to to change the complexion of the project, partially or in a big measure. So, the simple answer to the question of matching our requirements; may it be job description, scope of work or project is expertise, experience, capability to decide on right products, nuances of the project and a demonstrated capability of having done so in some measure, may it be leaders, bureaucrats, business and professional entities and what not?
The other part which is missed in this game of delivery, which though called the soft part, is the real hard nut to crack, which generally does not happen. First is courage, followed by grit and determination, a never say never die approach and practice, manifested by endless perseverance. Needless to say you can’t afford to miss focus. And in today’s world acquiring knowledge of the relevant field in the ever changing knowledge landscape, from a relevant and usable point of view and generally not failing in having a good measure of the discerning acumen. This supports the iterative models of projects and processes which run for decades, by way of right knowledge, product, technology and practice interventions.
For a country like India, one is the national scale, then at the state level and then of business, scientific and other enterprises of the government, does the expertise available and being used match the needed expertise for delivery. It can also be shared between the political executive, the permanent bureaucracy and the professional expertise on offer. It is claimed there, because in the situation of the lack of such a claim, the governments would find wanting in professional competence of things they have to do/operate/deliver on a day to day level. The whole planning process also becomes suspect and that being so, processes and actions that follow would also lack credibility.
Are we in such an impasse, led by the political executive and permanent battery of public servants not behind. The professionals on display are more of a lip service of variants, governments generally want to substantiate their end game. Winning an election or a few of them, being in public life for decades or passing an exam and hanging on endlessly, however brilliant you might be at the beginning of the game, is not an expertise with which today’s governance and delivery can be handled. See the whole gamut of tasks ranging from receipts, expenditure, financial administration to developmental administration to government’s fortune 500 companies to achieving SDGs to law and order to integrate artificial intelligence to our national existence. It can be overwhelming for any government more so when you lack expertises to the level required in most of them. Our political class can’t calculate even the financial burden of freebies, leave aside anything else. Do we even have an Expertise Audit for all public functionaries, who decide on our fate and that of the nation?
WHAT GOVERNANCE CAN BE ACHIEVED WITH THE LACK OF PROVEN EXPERTISE OF THE TASKS AT HAND?
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.