The Malaysian Insider | PUTRAJAYA, 13-July-2009 — The much-talked about government report card to show how well ministers and their ministries are performing will only be out next June, said Tan Sri Koh Tsu Koon today.
Koh, a senator, who was recently brought into Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s Cabinet to take charge of the government’s key performance indicator (KPI), said the ministers had already set their own focus areas and target dates.
However, the first review of their work will only be out one year from now.
He said there was a lot of work to be done first before the results could be seen, noting that the KPI system was recently introduced by the prime minister after his takeover in April.
“We are at present at the level of driving performances,” Koh told reporters during a briefing here today.
He explained that the groundwork included evaluating the strengths and weaknesses and allowing for corrective action to be taken to improve the leaders’ work performance based on six priority areas which Najib had announced last Saturday.
He noted that a carrot-and-stick approach will be used to judge the way the leaders perform.
“In the final analysis, in any system of KPI, there will be rewards. And the reward will in a sense, if he performs, the people will elect him again or the government will appoint him again if he’s not an elected officer,” Koh said.
But he declined to elaborate on the penalties ministers and other leaders who fail to perform will receive.
“What kind of punishment? Warning? Whatever, I think we’ll deal with that after one or two years of implementation.
“To talk about it now is a bit premature, in the sense we should be focused on performing,” he said.
The government has come up with the list of six key areas it needed to work on based on direct feedback from the public as well as from news reports and pollsters such as the Merdeka Center.
They are: reducing crime and corruption, improving education, improving public transport system, raising low-income households and upgrading basic infrastructure outside towns.
Koh pointed out the list of six main focus areas were to ultimately help the government move forward and achieve developed country status.
The senator took pains to point out several other steps the government would be taking between now and next June, when the first review will be done.
The prime minister will start announcing the target deadline for each of the six milestones to be achieved at the end of this month.
Another KPI workshop will be held next month, at which all ministers will lay down more concrete details on how they will achieve their plans within the target time frame.
And from September onwards, the government will unroll the full action plan on tackling the six public concerns that form the core of the strategies.
Koh said Najib is taking the whole performance indicator business very seriously and will be holding monthly meetings with ministers concerned to push forward the national objectives.