Efficient performance management involves a series of restructuring and alignment of goals and targets for any organization in a productive and goal-attaining manner. Performance management enables administrators easily to correct a mistake on the part of the employees and also boost the productivity of an organization altogether. The benefits of performance management included; reduced costs of operation, growth of sales, especially businesses, motivated workforce with high professionalism and improved mechanism of management control (Nelsen &Paul, 2013).
This paper seeks to understand the perceptions of the people in Rwanda on the role performance management have played in reforming local governments in Rwanda. The paper evaluates the service delivery, budget and planning methods, management techniques of the stakeholders in both the local and national governments. Therefore, it can be deduced that performance management does play a role in the development of local governments.
The theoretical background used in the analysis of the paper was the Agency theory. Interviews and questionnaires were used as the formal means for data collection. The sample comprised of 15 correspondents in Bugesera who undertook interviews and Rulindo Districts and a randomized sample taken from Rweru in Bugesera filled the questionnaires. The research concluded that local governments were efficient and well-organized under performance management techniques. They had effective service delivery technologies, quick responses and were more participatory in community projects. The locals on the other hand paid taxes promptly increasing the revenues collected hence facilitating the local governments’ jurisdiction. Therefore, it can be deduced that performance management does play a role in the reforming of local governments.
The general costs of running the local governments and the departments in it have grown in the past 20 years. This was predominantly caused by the rigidity of companies to adopt new techniques instead of the traditional ones. New public management techniques have proved efficient in the performance of the public sector. The extent to which the two parameters interrelate, as the debate started in the 80s (Awortwi, 2006b).
The prepositions agreed on were; the tradition methods of management were resource-intensive, corrupt, bureaucratic, expensive, detrimental to economic growth and unsustainable for a dynamic nature of the society. These adversities led to the introduction of the NPM (New Public Management) (Hood, 1991).
These developments were inevitable because of poor economic growth rates in the early 80s in Africa, governments’ failures, inefficiency and embezzlement that rocked many governments. Externally, financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank put pressure on African countries to change. This forced many nations to adopt news mechanism to curb these adversities.
Rwanda made it international recognition as a country that almost perished in the hands of tribal violence; the genocide. Tribalism affected the objectivity and viability of the public more so in service delivery. However, NPM mechanism provided a contemporized, efficient and inclusive methodology for performance management. This did not only prove effective, but nation-building in nature. Rwanda in the past decade has embraced the changes categorically in its local governments to address efficiency and transparency in service delivery that have shaped its success in such a short time (Putzel et al., 2009).
Rwanda’s human development index is one of the lowest in the world and Africa too (Putzel et al., 2009).
Politically, Rwanda was a colony of the Germans prior to World War 2 when they were placed under the Belgians. The Belgians can be attributed for institutionalizing, civilizing and reforming the pre-existing primitive mechanisms used in all spheres of the Rwandese society. The Hutu-Tutsi rivalry and wars that rocked the nation since its independence in 1962 culminated in the bloody genocide that ended in 1994.
The institutionalizing of local governments (LGs) in 2000 brought an avenue to distribute equitably and decentralize resources in the country. It was seen as an avenue to promote cohesion and prevent the emergence of conflict, promote integrated development in the local areas. They were to customize the development agenda for each region to lie parallel to the central governments. Reforms that took in 2006, further decentralized the financial capacities of these districts’ governments. The study centered its research in Bugesera with additional data from the neighboring Rulindo district.
Bugesera district has a population of 292,380 people split into 15 sectors. There are 72 cells and 581 villages in it and is considered as the poorest in Rwanda. However, the changes and new mechanisms used in Bugesera have drawn attention to the subject of having the new performance management tools included in our local governments. The primary goals of this study were; is therefore to
To assess to what difference the performance management have on the budgeting, planning, monitoring and evaluation and how did the citizens perceive it?
Second, the performance of the mayor and his relations with the President and the departments under him?
The nature of how citizens evaluated performance of the administrator and the accessibility of the services offered
Research Design
The data collected involved two series of steps. I did my field work that included questionnaires and face –to-face interviews with key informants. The region I carried out my research was in Bugesera and used additional data from the Rulindo District. The data collection also involved secondary sources from literature that gave me the much-needed insight on how to tackle this study effectively.
The nature of my research design I first analyzed the theoretical and literature review on a number of documentation on the Rwandese society and I ended up with the conceptual framework. This formed the backdrop to my methodological framework that was comprised of the research hypothesis and a comprehensive questionnaire to examine a number of issues in the case study.
The interviews that I undertook on the 15 correspondents belonging to the 15 sectors in Bugesera were semi-structured. This also included discussions with 64 citizens and carried questionnaires on 50 of them. I included document reviews on reports pertaining Bugesera LG, the policies used, the plans made, and other literature from journals relevant to the subject. The interviewing process was assisted by the LG authority that had two employees in this, nine LG staff, one of the NGOs and two from ministries. These formed the team that formulated the semi-structured questions to be used in the interviewing process.
The sampling process for choosing the 15 informants involved the snowballing techniques. This was effective because of the nature of the classified information that we sought to analyze. There was a standard feature in the 15 informants sampled; they all were previously employed either in NGOs or the LGs. This was highly beneficial as they gave first-hand information on the case study. A coordinator further assisted me in one of the issues-based meetings I attended. These meetings were made to analyze the problems facing each of the 72 sectors. The meeting had 64 people who helped me with my interviewing process and further recommended me to trust informants to seek data from.
These interactive issues-based meetings helped me understand issues were solved at the village level. This helped me reformulate the questionnaires to appeal to their framework of problem-solving and whether they felt satisfied with the nature in which the governments were working. This also gave me insight to different views and opinions on the way people wanted planning and service delivery done. This mode includes new research parameters, modify my interviews and sample in order to evaluate the governments performances effectively.
The conceptual framework for this design is based on the NPM theory that leads to the performance management framework. This research seeks to analyze to what extent is the performance management methods used have transformed the LGs in the planning methods used, budgeting techniques, and monitoring, evaluation and program implementations. The paper also further seeks to know the interpersonal relationship between the president and the mayor and other stakeholders. Furthermore, this study attempts to analyze the perceptions of the performance management mechanism used by the LGs and how they have impacted the communities.
The analysis is based on the principal-agency theory. The primary proposition of the theory purports that whenever the principal party delegate authority to the agent, the well-being of the main party is affected by the choices of the agent party (Arrow, 1985).
This theory is relative to this study in the sense that the principal party is the Bugesera community, the President, and the local Council. The agent, on the other hand, is the Mayor of Bugesera. However, he also becomes a major party to the case where he delegates duties to his juniors. The two models; performance management and the central agency theory (PAT) describe the principal party relationship or fundamentally the employer-employee relation. Due to the changing roles played by the president and the community, the council, the mayor, the mayor and the employees and the sector coordinators, the performance management methodology has helped streamline these ambiguities.
The performance management has helped analyze whether these relations are well-defined, objective and also look for the information asymmetries in existing between the principal and the agent.
References
Awortwi, N. (2006b) ‘Enough of ‘Blackbox’ Explanations in Africa’s Public Sector and Administration Reforms’, in Awortwi, N. and E. Site (Ed.) African Perspectives on New Public Management: Implications for Human Resource Training, pp. 23-49. Maastricht: Shaker Publishing BV
Nielsen, Poul A. (2013).
Performance Management, Managerial Authority, and Public Service Performance. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. Published electronically on June 2. doi:10.1093/jopart/mut025.
Putzel, J. and F.Golooba Mutebi (2009) ‘State Building in Fragile Situations: How can Donors ‘do no harm’ and maximize their Positive Impact? Country Case Study-Rwanda July, 2009′, OECD.