Govt performance to be monitored online

The Government is in a process of developing an IT solution that will monitor the performance of central and local government as well as parastatals.

Monday, November 18, 2013
Local leaders at performance contracts signing ceremony in Kigali in June. Their performance could soon be monitored online. The New Times/ File.

The Government is in a process of developing an IT solution that will monitor the performance of central and local government as well as parastatals.The system, dubbed "Government Command Centre,” was last week announced by Prime Minister Pierre Damien Habumuremyi during his presentation of government activities for the fiscal year 2013/2014.Speaking to The New Times at the weekend, Didier Nkurikiyimfura, the director-general of ICT in the Ministry of Youth and ICT, said the system operates like a vehicle dashboard.It will display the performance of every agency, including show hitches.Nkurikiyimfura said the application will mainly be used to monitor the implementation of performance contracts, which are signed by officials from the central and local government."Data will be collected from several agencies to show how each is performing. The Ministry of Finance, through the financial management information system, will be connected to Government Command Centre to monitor the performance in terms of finance,” said Nkurikiyimfura.Bridging info sharing gap"This system will facilitate decision makers in knowing how to spend and where to spend as well as ensuring that taxpayers’ money is spent effectively. Since information from Government Command Centre will be instant and timely; it will bridge the gap of information sharing in several agencies,” the ICT chief added.Nkurikiyimfura said to have the centre in place, they will make use of the cloud computing system, which is already in place and being used by government agencies.Cloud computing will serve as the server for Nkurikiyimfura. Normally, cloud computing allows corporations and businesses to have their data hosted and accessed any time.A similar system is common in big private corporations and only a few countries such as Malaysia have used it as key performance indicators.Nkurikiyimfura said they will start on a small scale connecting a few sectors like health education and finance but the grand plan is to have all government entities connected to the system.