A set of high-powered meetings were held in the Prime Minister's Office under the chairmanship of Special Assistant on Establishment, Mr. Mohammad Shehzad Arbab along with a Peer Review Committee to evaluate progress for the 3rd Quarter of FY 2019-20 based on agreed upon goals and targets. The Federal Cabinet has embarked on setting a new benchmark of performance management, as Prime Minister Imran Khan entered into performance agreements with 11 ministers earlier this year to conduct a pilot until June 2020 before scaling across the Federal Government. The participant ministries being reviewed in the pilot phase are Communication, Housing & Works, Power Division, Water Resources, Industries & Production, Federal Education & Professional Training, Climate Change, National Food Security & Research, Ministry of Health, Commerce and Petroleum Division. The spirit behind these agreements is to help ministries undertake a forward planning exercise by identifying high impact initiatives, with clear targets and timelines. Performance Agreements are part of a broader Performance Management System where performance goals of all officers under each ministry will also be aligned and derived from the Performance Agreements between the Prime Minister and the Minister. The Performance Management System was approved through a Cabinet Decision in September 2019 and was based on recommendations of the Task Force on Institutional Reforms, under the Chairmanship of Dr Ishrat Hussain, Advisor to the Prime Minister on Institutional Reforms. To operationalize the Cabinet Decision, Mr Shehzad Arbab, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Establishment, spearheaded the Performance Agreements pilot exercise with 11 ministries to refine the approach, build the systems and scale implementation in the next fiscal year. Mr. Shehzad Arbab during his opening remarks at the session, stated that "Besides performance accountability, the purpose of the review sessions is to learn and refine the Performance Agreements to implement this transformative reform across the Federal Government starting July 2020, when the pilot is complete." An experienced Peer Review Committee headed by Mr. Jahanzeb Khan, Deputy Chairman Planning Commission and comprising of Secretary Establishment, Secretary Finance, Secretary Planning and Secretary Cabinet was also established to successfully complete the pilot. Individual sessions were scheduled for each of the 11 Ministries, and progress was presented to the Review Committee by the respective Federal Secretary. Progress was reviewed based on performance on development, service delivery, policy making and revenue generation, as either achieved, on-track or off-track under the agreed timelines. The novelty of these performance agreements is that ministries specified interdependencies on other ministries before signing with the Prime Minister, which has now served as concrete feedback to timely remove bottlenecks and improve governance. In addition, based on experience, ministries also put forth their lessons learnt and recommendations to improve the Performance Agreements which were discussed in detail to fine tune the Performance Agreements for the next financial year.
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