A Management Information System (MIS) forms the backbone of program management. In their digital form, they have cognitively striking and user-friendly monitoring Dashboards.
However, the conventional MIS systems, either as physical reports or digital Dashboards, are typically designed to inform the monitoring requirements of higher-level officials about the progress of program implementation. The data captured, their periodicity, the process-flows, and reports generated reflect this imperative.
There is limited attention paid to the supervisory requirements of frontline managers – the block education/agriculture/engineering officers, the town planning supervisors, the health inspectors, the revenue inspectors, the Station House Officers etc. Their requirements are for granular and periodic enough information which is both relevant to their supervisory functions and is actionable by them.
For example, a school inspector can prioritise his/her inspection schedules based on information about which schools are performing poorly on the 3-4 specific indicators (say, syllabus coverage, student attendance rates, internal exam scores, budget utilisation etc) on each of which they also have instruments and the power to act to improve the situation. There is little point deluding them with non-actionable (at their level) information on absence of toilets and other infrastructure, teacher vacancies, inadequate teacher training, low college enrolment rate etc, all of which are however useful feedback to officials at much higher levels.
Instead, MIS reporting systems (physical or digital) must be designed bottom-up. Primarily they should respond to the supervisory needs of the frontline managers. They also should respond to the monitoring requirements of district and HoD level officials, and system improvement feedback requirements of government level officials.
Some questions to examine in the design of such MIS
1. What are the information requirements for frontline officials – implementing officials and frontline managers? Is the relevant data being captured and with the required periodicity? Is the decision-support information being reported as actionable feedback?
2. What are the information requirements for monitoring the progress of implementation? What periodicity of its collection? How is it being reported? Which categories/levels of officials require this information?
3. What information is required for system improvement measures? What periodicity of its collection? How is it being reported? Which categories/levels of officials require this information?
1 comment:
Completely agree with the blog, Sir. There is a glaring lack of appreciation for MIS tools to enable lower-level supervisory officials to improve their own performance, without intervention from higher levels. In addition to State Level Dashboards, there should be dashboards for every manager from the frontline.
In some ways, will try and expand on this. If we were to say that the success of a program is dependent on higher-level supervision + frontline/middle managerial supervision + front line performance + local PRIs + client level behavior, we may need program dashboards to address needs at every level, for optimal levels of co-production from every stakeholder. Even if the PRI Institutions are not legally empowered, dashboards for them may enable them to improve their relative performance through actions within their means (financial/ social pressure). The dashboards could show both absolute and relative performance.
For example, in the case of Education, in addition to State Level Dashboards, perhaps a dashboard for DEO, MEO, Head Master, Teacher, PRIs, and also parents/children.
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