The Commonwealth Secretariat on Friday, 19th November, 2021 commenced a 5-day Advanced Online Training of Trainers on Government Performance Management System (PMS) for Ministries, Departments and Agencies for the Gambia Civil Service.
The training is presented in non-technical language and is primarily aimed at senior management and decision makers in various MDAs of the Government.
The objective is to train senior government officials and expose them to the best practices and latest tools to monitor, evaluate and improve performance in government with the aim of achieving effectiveness and efficiency in Government service delivery.
In her inaugural speech, the Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Rt Hon. Patricia Scotland QC, welcomed The Gambia back to the Commonwealth. She continued by saying that this training program in The Gambia is unique because it is the first in-country program for an African Commonwealth member country. As such, it will not only be setting a benchmark for other countries but will also be an example of best practice for other countries to emulate across all Commonwealth countries.
Hon. Scotland went further to say that leaders have realized that government performance is a major determinant of countries’ competitive and comparative advantage in the race among nations, which will be won by countries that have effective and efficient government systems, and not necessarily by those endowed with abundant resources.
The Honourable Secretary General concluded by assuring The Gambia Government of the Commonwealth’s support in its drive to implement Performance Management across the Public Service.
In her welcoming statement, the Vice President and Minister responsible for the Civil Service of the Gambia Dr. Isatou Touray, expressed her delight for The Gambia’s rejoining of the Commonwealth and reaffirmed her government’s full commitment and current efforts to lead the implementation of the reform process.
The Vice President added that the broad aim and objective of the Civil Service Reform Programme 2018-2027 cannot be easily achieved in the absence of a robust performance management system that will continuously monitor and evaluate performance of public servants on set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are mutually agreed upon.
In her closing remarks, she urged the participants to fully concentrate and focus on this online training program, because they will serve as trainers for their respective institutions.
The Secretary General and Head of Civil Service, Mr. Noah Touray, thanked the Commonwealth Secretariat for providing them with the technical support for a better understanding of the PMS toolkit.
He concluded by advising the participants to pay attention to the toolkit provided by the resource persons and apply it in their various institutions.
The training will be conducted by Professor Prajapati Trivedi, Special Commonwealth Envoy for SDG. Prof Prajapati is a leading authority in Government Performance Management System with a wealth of experience in the setting up and implementation of Performance Management across the Commonwealth.
The training is part of PMO’s efforts to reintroduce Performance Management in the Civil Service as a major component of the 2018-2027 Civil Service Reform Programme. This training follows the recent validation of the Performance Management Policy and once completed will go a long way to facilitate implementation of PMS in The Gambia.
By Musa Saho- PMO
