The final Reports of the Alternative Monitoring of the 2019 - 2020 PAR Action Plan Implementation

On July 19^th the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI) together with the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA) presented the final reports of the alternative monitoring of the 2019 – 2020 PAR action plan implementation.   

Event participants were welcomed by Levan Avalishvili – Programs Director of IDFI, Colombe DE MERCEY – Team leader for Governance and Human Capital, Delegation of the European Union to Georgia,Vakhushti MENABDE – Democratic Institutions Support Program Director, GYLA and Ani Barisashvili – Representative of the Department of Policy Planning and Coordination of the Government Administration of Georgia.

During the presentation participants discussed the following directions of the PAR Action Plan for 2019 – 2020: Policy Planning and Coordination, Accountability, Public Service Delivery, and Public Finance Management. The monitoring process revealed a number of shortcomings and challenges that characterize the policy-making process in Georgia, including the absence of mechanisms for reduction or elimination of identified risk in the action plan, lack of cooperation and coordination between agencies, weakness of oversight, and etc.

The analysis of the Public Administration Reform Roadmap and the Action Plan for 2019-2020 revealed that the documents mainly address the challenges relevant during their development and accordingly define priority directions. However, in a number of cases, insufficient or technical activities are defined for the implementation of objectives, undermining their significance. Objectives and indicators require refinement according to S.M.A.R.T. criteria. In addition, in order to actually achieve the objectives, more activities are necessary to be defined and real efforts need to be made for their implementation, as well as, sufficient and more ambitious indicators need to be considered for the measurement of objectives. It is notable that the Roadmap has not been updated since 2016 and, therefore, there are several inconsistencies between the Action Plan and the Roadmap. It is crucial for the Public Administration Reform Roadmap and the Action Plan to be in compliance with each other and for the Action Plan to be developed in accordance to challenges outlined in the Roadmap. Otherwise, the significance of the Roadmap is undermined.

The monitoring of the Action Plan revealed the following key findings:

Out of four objectives envisaged by the Policy Planning and Coordination Direction of the Action Plan three are unimplemented and one is mostly implemented. Out of 17 activities, 10 are fully implemented, one is mostly implemented, two are partly implemented and four are unimplemented;

Three of the five objectives envisaged by the Accountability Direction of the Action Plan are partly implemented and two are unimplemented. Out of the six outcome indicators defined for the objectives (including one additional indicator), one is fully implemented, one - partly, four – are unimplemented. As for the activities, out of the 14 activities defined in the Accountability direction during 2019-2020, only one activity was fully implemented, one - mostly, four activities were partly implemented, and most of the activities (eight activities) were not implemented.Out of the 19 output indicators, two were fully implemented, one - mostly, three - partly, and 13 – are unimplemented;

Out of the seven objectives envisaged by the Public Service Delivery Direction of the Action Plan, one is fully implemented, one is mostly implemented, three – are partly implemented and two are unimplemented by the end of 2020. Out of nine outcome indicators two are fully implemented, four are partly implemented and three are unimplemented. As for the activities, out of 28 activities outlined for 2019-2020, eight are fully implemented, four are mostly implemented, 12 are partly implemented and four are unimplemented. Out of 40 output indicators (including additional indicators), 15 are fully implemented, three are mostly implemented, 12 are partly implemented and 10 are unimplemented;

Out of three objectives envisaged by the Public Finance Management Direction of the Action Plan two are mostly implemented, while one is unimplemented. Out of seven activities, one is fully implemented, three are mostly implemented and three are partly implemented.

Read the reports here:

Direction 1: Policy Planning and Coordination

Direction 3: Accountability

Direction 4: Public Service Delivery

Direction 5: Public Finance Management

Reports have been produced with the assistance of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI) and GYLA  do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.