Public universities top in evaluation of government ministries, departments
University graduates on their graduation day.
Public universities have emerged top performers in an evaluation of the performance of government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) despite the financial woes most of them are going through.
The universities topped the ‘Functional categories for state corporations’ in the financial year 2018/2019 according to a recently released by the Public Service Management and Monitoring Unit. Universities took five of the top 10 slots of the best performing state corporations.
In the document, Report on Evaluation of the Performance of Ministries, State Corporations and Tertiary Institutions for 2019/2020, the University of Embu is the top ranked state corporation (2.1250) followed by Tharaka University College (2.1791) and TVET Curriculum Development, Assessment and Certification Council (2.2587).
The University of Nairobi was ranked fourth (2.2621) while Chuka University was position six after scoring 2.4085. South Eastern Kenya University was placed eighth with a score of 2.5738.
Nairobi Technical Training Institute was the best performing tertiary education institution (2.7225). At the bottom was Nuu Technical and Vocational College (4.3410). This category comprised teacher training colleges, technical training institutes and national polytechnics.
Kabete National Polytechnic
The best performing teacher training college was St John’s Teacher Training College, Kilimambogo (3.0157) while Kabete National Polytechnic was the best performer (2.7756) in the national polytechnics category.
The report relied on achievements weighed against the performance contracts the institutions had signed at the beginning of the financial year.
The performance grades were awarded on a five-point scale of between a raw/composite score of 1 and 5 where a score of 1.00 is the best and 5.00 the worst. In the ‘functional’ categories, public universities had a score of 3.0312.
The best performing sector is education with an average composite score of 3.2018 while the worst performing is agriculture, rural and urban development with an average composite score of 3.7293.
“The analysis of the performance of tertiary institutions indicates that there was a decline in performance. In addition, four tertiary institutions achieved ‘Poor’ performance grade as opposed to none in 2018/2019,” the report notes.
State House
The appraisal involved a total of 366 MDAs. It comprised 21 ministries, State House, Office of the Deputy President, Office of the Attorney General and Department of Justice, 223 state corporations and 119 tertiary institutions.
The performance criteria/indicators used were absorption of allocated government funds, absorption of externally mobilised resources, core mandate, project completion rate, access to government procurement opportunities, youth internships, industrial attachments and apprenticeships and prevention of corruption.
Each MDA was required to undertake a self-evaluation and thereafter an external team of evaluators moderated the results against evidence submitted upon request to support the achievement stated.
The Ministry of Public Service and Gender has automated the performance management process through the development of the Government Performance Contracting Information System (GPCIS).
