Monitoring the performance of Public Programs: contributing to the transparency of the nation’s resources.

Chile has registered 700 public programmes. The annual performance monitoring is carried out by two institutions: SES/Dipres, so it is not a simple task. In order to contribute to greater transparency in the use of public resources, SES/Dipres incorporated the principles of innovation: co-creation and testing of improvements to the process. The result was a substantial improvement in the quality of the monitoring reports, making them a relevant input for decision-making.

Innovation Summary

Innovation Overview

The monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system of Chile's public supply is managed by two institutions: Subsecretaría de Evaluación Social (SES) and Dirección de Presupuestos (Dipres). One of the stages of the system corresponds to the annual monitoring of public spending, which until 2019 was carried out independently by both institutions.

In this context, in 2020 the SES-Dipres teams began a co-creation process to optimise monitoring. Work was done on the fragmentation that meant carrying out the processes in parallel, which generated problems in the reporting of information and communication between the participating actors, which had effects on the quality of the data reported by the public supply, the transparency of the information available to the State and the quality of the information to decide on the budget and public spending. In the first stage (2021), work was done on the standardisation of concepts used in the monitoring process and the development of a single web platform, where 23 ministries and 700 public programmes in force report information on their annual implementation.

The most recent stage, initiated in 2022, considered the integration of the platform's users in the co-construction of the process, using innovative methodologies that allowed prioritising, testing and providing feedback on the proposed improvements. The results obtained from the monitoring process have not only been a key antecedent for the allocation of public resources, but also a product that allows transparency to citizens regarding the performance of programmes financed with the resources of all Chileans.

Currently, innovation has become the main tool to improve any stage of the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system. The current challenges are related to maintaining the continuous improvement of this process in three areas: (i) the development of clear and informative monitoring reports, (ii) the user experience of the platform, and (iii) the dissemination of the information reported, considering the different stakeholders.

Innovation Description

What Makes Your Project Innovative?

In its implementation, innovation principles and tools have been used transversally, structured on the basis of: (i) the collaboration of both teams, together with the integration of stakeholders and (ii) continuous iteration over the years. Each new phase considers an experimental approach where areas for improvement are identified, proposals are designed and implemented, identifying successes and failures to be considered in the next process and (iii) people, incorporating actions where officials from both institutions and the responsible ministries have participated in the experimentation cycle. Complementarily, co-design tools have been used, such as the storyboard.

What is the current status of your innovation?

Currently, work has been carried out with internal and external users of the monitoring process. With the former, the platform's problems have been prioritised and improvement projects have been co-created, using sprint sessions, based on their own experience. In addition, with external users, problems have been identified and improvement projects have been tested at different stages to ensure their successful implementation.

Innovation Development

Collaborations & Partnerships

Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

Decision-makers (budget sector and Congress) have benefited from having clear, precise, standardised and comparable results of programme execution, which allow them to allocate resources taking these elements into account. On the other hand, it has benefited the citizenry insofar as these inputs that are generated and published allow the transparency of the state's programmes and the results of their annual execution.

Innovation Reflections

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

An increase in the total number of registered programmes has been observed, from 687 in 2019 to 700 in 2022, associated with the effort to make the offer implemented annually more transparent.

To measure the results of the improvement, a survey of external users and participatory feedback sessions for internal users have been used. In terms of results: Regarding the overall evaluation of the monitoring, the average score with which the process was evaluated in 2019 was 4.1, which increased to 5.1 in 2021.

The results of the budget allocation correlate with the results of the monitoring process: all programmes that were conditional on the monitoring results had lower budget allocations.

Challenges and Failures

The main challenge has been to replicate and give continuity to the innovation processes and to establish them in a stable way within the work of both institutions. Along the way, obstacles have been encountered, such as lack of time and human resources, which sometimes prevent progress with improvements in the monitoring process. In order to face them, it has been fundamental to highlight the successes obtained in the previous process, in order to remember the advantages obtained by incorporating innovation in the work of the institutions.

Conditions for Success

N/A

Replication

It can be replicated in any inter-institutional work that seeks to progressively advance in objectives and considers a cycle of problem identification-design-implementation-evaluation and improvement. Two particularities can be replicated in other contexts: the participatory and co-creative nature of the development of improvement projects with internal and external users, and the use of different user experience methodologies for the participation of the different actors.

Lessons Learned

The importance of co-creation, insofar as it implies effectively considering the experiences and proposals of the work teams, which ultimately have the capacity to have a substantial impact on the improvement of processes, valuing the different knowledge that the different users can contribute.

In addition, it has made it possible to incorporate new work methodologies into the work of both institutions (SES and Dipres), which optimise the different stages of the Evaluation and Monitoring System (M&E) and the products associated with it, such as the sprint methodology, where each of the proposed improvement projects are designed, prototyped and tested.

Anything Else?

This initiative was the winner of the 2022 edition of the Funciona! Promoted by the National Directorate of the Civil Service in collaboration with the Government Laboratory, which seeks to recognise the capacity for innovation reflected in initiatives designed and implemented by teams of civil servants and municipalities at the national level.