AP, PEMANDU partner to moniter public services

Vijayawada, Dec 15 (INN): On the concluding day of the Collectors' Conference in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh State Development Planning Society signed an agreement with the Performance Management and Delivery Unit (PEMANDU) under the Prime Minister's Department Malaysia to co-operate in areas of performance management, project delivery and monitoring related to public programmes, education and retail services.

The signatories of the agreement were Sanjay Gupta, CEO Andhra Pradesh State Development Planning Society and Ex Officio Spl. Secretary to Government, Planning Department and Ravindran Devagunam, Director, PEMANDU. The ceremony was witnessed by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chanrababu Naidu and PEMANDU CEO and Special Advisor (With Ministerial Status) to the Prime Minister of Malaysia Dato' Idris Jala.

The signing of the agreement comes in less than a month after Niti Aayog entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with PEMANDU in Malaysia. According to the MoU, PEMANDU and the Union Government will work as partners in rolling out impactful and meaningful public sector initiatives in the national and state level.

The Chief Minister expressed happiness over being the first state to partner with PEMANDU. He said that the PEMANDU's emphasis on governance and structural changes will help the state to achieve the goal of being the best state in the country by 2029 and the best destination in the world by 2050. This is in the same spirit as Malaysia's aim to be transformed into a developed nation status by 2020, he added.

'Our aim is to focus on inclusive growth, poverty alleviation and wealth creation; PEMANDU's partnership with the state government will clear roadblocks and accelerate our state's growth,' he explained.

"From his days as the Chief Minister of the United Andhra Pradesh, the Chief Minister has been familiar with and keenly interested in the Malaysian approach that has boosted its growth and development indicators dramatically in the past five years, and was keen to reciprocate it here," PEMANDU CEO Dato' Idris Jala said.

Earlier, he gave an inspirational presentation illustrating the success story of PEMANDU. He said that the Chief Minister's mission-mode approach is in line with PEMANDU's objective.

Ravindran Devagunam Director, PEMANDU, gave an elaborate presentation on how PEMANDU has achieved success in reducing the street crime rate, reforming education and boosting the retail services in the country. He said that PEMANDU will serve as a catalyst to drive the government officials.

He added that the agreement will allow PEMANDU and the Andhra Pradesh Government to closely work as partners in developing, implementing and monitoring government programmes and strategic developmental plans.

Under its customized 'Big Fast Results' Methodology, PEMANDU will provide on-the-job training to the Central Coordinating Team provided by the state government. The team includes stakeholders, customers and government officials.

The training session will be carried in three-phases: Pre-Lab: Defining the scope of work, planning of lab logistics, suitable templates for local context; Lab: Prioritizing targets, trajectories, relevant benchmarks, action plan in the key sectors and Post-Lab: Integrating lab recommendation into consolidated transformation programme for purpose of implementation, feedback from stakeholders and participants.

PEMANDU CEO Dato' Idris Jala said that they will exercise a 30-30-40 strategy during the training sessions. According to this, 30% of recommendations will be implemented exactly as suggested; 30% of recommendations will be refined to achieve inclusive growth. The remaining 40% will be newly generated ideas.

The sessions will begin from 5th January, 2016 and 8 labs will be held primarily. PEMANDU services (surveys, labs, feedback) will be provided for a period of 14 weeks.