Column: Jones On Govt, Accountability & More
[Opinion column written by OBA Senate Leader Marcus Jones]
Let’s be S.M.A.R.T.
We live in a capitalist society, where the private sector focuses on generating the most profits by maximising its revenue while minimising its expenditure. That is how it measures its performance.
Alternatively, the public sector aims to produce balanced budgets while providing optimum service to its citizens. It should be ensuring that its communities are safe through good policing, young people are employable through quality education and its seniors live comfortably through pension schemes and healthcare programmes that cater to the unique needs of this treasured group within our country.
This is how the Government measures its performance.
The public has spent the last two weeks listening to Members of Parliament, and now the members of the Senate will challenge and defend the performance of the Government by considering how its Ministerial Objectives match up with its performance. These objectives must be S.M.A.R.T. [specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound] or they will fail to be effective.
One of the most important components of developing S.M.A.R.T. objectives is that they must be specific. Let’s consider the Ministry of Finance, which incorporates an array of word salads to describe its goals.
“To provide strategic direction and an overall framework for effective financial management…to closely monitor the National Budget… to oversee and prudently manage the Public Pension Funds”.
These objectives are lofty, and make for great sound bytes but they are too general, and not specific enough. Doesn’t effective financial management equal surplus budgets and can’t we interpret prudent management of the Public Pension Funds as there being sufficient funding for our seniors that goes beyond 2042?
If surplus budgets was the supreme measurement for this PLP Government’s financial management performance over the 22 budgets it has crafted since 1998, then this Government has been an abysmal failure, having only this year claimed to produce a surplus budget—a claim that is rife with controversy seeing that the Government has raided the ‘Sinking Fund’ to cover its Operations Expenditure.
If one of the objectives of the Police is to reduce crime then shouldn’t we have crime statistics as a metric to determine the organisation’s success?
You will not be able to rate the Police’s success by this metric within the Budget Book. The measurement of choice for Parliamentarians to gauge their effectiveness is the public’s “overall satisfaction with the Bermuda Police Service” and “the public’s annual perceptions of feeling safe on Bermuda’s roads”.
Feelings and perceptions are not scientifically measurable; crime statistics and the number of road accidents are.
Here’s an example where one Ministry has performance measures that are S.M.A.R.T. and worth mentioning, not only because they are measurable, but they are also relevant.
The Ministry of Public Works & Environment has an objective that states, “To maintain the public road infrastructure to ensure the safe passage of motorists and pedestrians.”
Ask any taxi driver, who spends many hours daily on our roads, whether or not this objective is being met. One of the major, relevant complaints in our community today is the condition of our roads. This Ministry has a metric, “the number of public roads resurfaced during the year in kilometres”, to rate its performance.
Interestingly, 7 km were paved in 2023/24, a revised forecast of 4 km will have been paved in 2024/25 and the estimate for 2025/26 is 6 km. One can get caught deep in the weeds of how that road paving productivity compares with similar jurisdictions the size of Bermuda or how much does the conditions of our roads contribute to road accidents and whether or not there is a connection between the two.
Having this measurable yardstick allows for a quality debate on the effectiveness of this department, because its success has a direct impact on the lives of every resident.
Another major component of setting effective goals using the acronym S.M.A.R.T. is that the goal should be achievable. If it is unreachable and year after year that remains the case, maybe it is time to reassess the goal.
For example, the Accountant General aims to have “The provision of audited annual financial statements of the Consolidated Fund within 240 days of March 31st.”
Having spent the lion’s share of my professional career within the private sector, managing the Accounts Department in hotels, this objective is reasonable, in my opinion.
In fact, if I could not achieve this then I may have needed to change my profession. But we all know that public finance is not the same as in the Private Sector. In 2023/24 this metric was not achieved, nor will it be in 2025/26.
The Opposition will stand on its feet and flog this Government for failing to meet this objective, and justifiably so.
Hopefully, the spokesperson on Finance on the Government bench will furnish us with a satisfactory answer to this poor record of delayed annual audited statements of the Consolidated Fund and given the Senate a road map of how it can improve. Should the time line [another S.M.A.R.T. tool for effective goal making] be lengthened or more staff be recruited to make this objective a reality?
As legislators tasked with the job of creating laws and policies that make our government work efficiently, being able to measure a government’s performance is critical to achieving that goal.
To rely on cleverly worded mission statements and objectives to chart a course for success without the principles enshrined within this useful acronym, will cause all of Government’s efforts to create prosperity and quality of life for its citizens to be an exercise in futility. The alternative is a set of performance measures that can be a tool whereby the present government can be judged fairly and rigorously with the intent of navigating its course correction because our country deserves it and is in desperate need of good governance.
- Marcus Jones, OBA Senate Leader
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