Another creative use of other agency requirement

By

AS is true of other national government agencies, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) DTI is subject to requirements imposed by oversight departments. One of these oversight departments is the Department of Budget & Management (DBM), which imposed the Organization Performance Indicator Framework (OPIF). This called for the specification of “major final outputs” or MFOs.

At the same time, DTI had already started to adopt the performance governance System (PGS). This too demanded that DTI should specify what its strategic priorities are; and under each priority, DTI had to put forward the strategic initiatives it should pursue, the measures for assessing actual performance it intended to use, and above all the targets for performance levels it commits to attain at certain periods (i.e. every semester; every year), moving forward into the foreseeable future.

The challenge to the Office for Strategy Management (OSM) team that had already been set up under the PGS process: how to meet the requirements of DBM’s OPIF, with its many MFOs, while at the same time pursuing the PGS strategic priorities, with its performance scorecards. On surface, the OPIF of DBM and the PGS looked dissimilar: the first demanded measurements for the usual business of the agency (what DTI would refer to as “business as usual”); the second kept insisting on genuine transformative, i.e., game-changing, in substance more strategic, outcomes. However, a closer look at the requirements of both would eventually show that an agency -- such as DTI that had already decided to pursue a serious, long-term, genuinely transformative strategy map --- could simply present its strategic priorities with their measurable game-changing outcomes as the MFOs of OPIF. In other words, present outcomes that in substance are strategic in character (and therefore more ambitious) as the regular “business-as-usual” outcomes (MFOs) called for by OPIF. It took a lot of creativity on the part of OSM to think this approach through; in the end, through the persuasive powers of Jeanne Pacheco, the approach presented by DTI was “approved” by DBM. Jeanne proved that there was absolutely no conflict between OPIF of DBM and the PGS of DTI.

To show there was no conflict, Jeanne Pacheco focused on one PGS strategic priority, referred to blandly as “stakeholder engagement,” also as an OPIF major final output or MFO. This is how she did it:

First, she argued that the governance and transformation program of DTI was “a change agenda that is citizen-centric, strategic, and not ‘business as usual.’” Given this character of the DTI agenda, she then pointed to “stakeholder engagement as a strategic priority to increase public-private sector partnerships, and that DTI subscribes to governance as a shared responsibility. Thus, DTI was intent at involving its constituents as partners in nation building, and therefore in strategy execution.”

She then argued: “A strong stakeholder engagement process is expected to improve the policy making process, enhance the communication process, and minimize conflict situations. Strong engagement with stakeholders may result to more responsive and effective policies. This therefore should be a ‘major final output’ for DTI.”

The argument sounded logical and difficult to disagree with. Ms. Pacheco, with her persuasive powers, eventually managed to convince DBM that DTI’s strategic priorities --- such as stakeholder engagement --- may be classified as, and are compliant with, DBM’s requirement to put forward MFOs.

Another feather in the cap of Jeanne Pacheco!