Acche Din Monitor

Concept

Design

Hard
Work

Prasanna
Viswanatha
n

Amarnath
Govindaraja
n

Suraj Gupta

Inputs and Reviews

Aashish
Chandorkar

Rahul
Bajoria

Why do we need a monitor?

How should a government benchmark itself given that all

problems wont get solved in 5 years?
The clich You cannot improve what you cant measure
The importance of data in understanding the success of a
government program itself has to be appreciated
Once data collection starts, the understanding of comparatives,
normalization and practicality builds over time
Each government department should be encouraged to take a
outcome driven view, at least in terms of spelling out
achievements

Acche Din Monitor tracks progress made

by the various government departments
The methodology used is: Reference Measure
Performance on Measure
Reference is defined by the announcements made by
various departments in the last couple of years
Measures are defined quantitatively and qualitatively for
each point of reference
Performance on measure is the actual work attainment,
sourced through media reports and PIB releases

There is no single way to define the

Reference being measured
Severall options were considered e.g. whats in the
manifesto, what the government should be doing (normative
view), whats promised in Parliament during sessions
We stuck with the government policy announcements
because they were the distillation of the actual intent
Focusing on what the government should ideally do opens
a can of worms lack of agreement, scope creep and
perennial grouse about why not one more thing
The methodology is then not amenable to ascertain loss of
opportunities

We are only tracking publicly announced

measures and their attainment
We have prioritized outcome and / or output driven
measures
We are mainly focusing on the close ended schemes
(infrastructure sectors) the open ended schemes (e.g.
NREGS) traditionally have no defined evaluation parameters
and continue to be laggards (e.g. Namami Gange) even
under this government
The success attainment is cross-checked against various
media sources, but the source data still comes from the
government sources

What can we do with such a

dashboard?
Can some government department accept and adopt it?
Can we establish an objective feedback mechanism?
Can something like this form the backbone for PRAGATI?
Can the importance of output / outcomes be established
with responsive government departments?