Hi ManilaB when I was in Singapore Civil service the balance score card is part and parcel to gauge the performance of a department vision and mission journey towards becoming "a world-class organization, . As a stake holder everyone at all level should like you say understanding, involvement, and participation, sometimes is easy to say than done.
Imagine playing a games of passing the message, during my scout activities day this was a fun way to review or evaluate the skills of communication information relay methods. The game leader gives the first member of each patrol a message which he must relay to the team member and so on until the message gets to the final team member. He tells the message to the game leader and receives points based on the correctness of the messages. Usually at the end of the day the message end up distorted if the message happened to be long and complicated.
All this happening in a bigger scale like in a civil service charter statement, the strategy map, and the governance scorecards. The top might have a clear vision but when come to the ground it might be distorted beyond recognition! When come to human the art of communication like they say is an art to master.
Posted by ManilaB
Having formally adopted its governance charter statement, strategy map, and governance scorecards, the Department of Transportation and Communications (DoTC) is giving public notice of its full commitment to them. It is posting these documents on its website. On a quarterly basis, it will be using the governance scorecard to report on its performance.
Thus, the department would be updating its governance performance reports every quarter, using its website.
Two immediate steps become necessary due to the public notice on the department's initiation into the PGS, and its commitment to update a quarterly performance governance report on its website.
The first of these steps is to seek the understanding, involvement, and participation of the women and men working at all levels of the department.
They should have a clear understanding of the governance charter statement, the strategy map, and the governance scorecards.
They should also be prepared to make formal commitments to the DoTC Secretary on their own performance contributions to the quarterly, annual, and longer-term governance scorecards of the entire department. In other words, they too, initially on a unit-by-unit basis, should come up with their own unit governance scorecards, which need to be fully aligned with those for DoTC as a whole.
The second step is similar to the first one, except that this is directed to the key stakeholders with whom the department works very closely. This requires not only the forging of the strategic partnership that the department's strategy map calls for. It also demands the formal setting up and eventual institutionalization of a multi-sector governance coalition, involving all key stakeholders. Through such a coalition, its members too make commitments to put in their performance contributions in support of the DoTC governance scorecards.
With these two steps, which need to be taken sooner rather than later, the department sends out clear signals that for the sake good governance, there has to be a responsible and positive participation from at least the people working in the department and the principal stakeholders, especially all the key members of its multi-sector governance coalition. By themselves, the top officials of DoTC cannot bring about the realization of the DoTC vision; but with the buy-in and full involvement of everyone in the department and of all key stakeholders of the department, the prospects for success would brighten considerably.
It must be noted, in this concluding note, that the targets the department has set are truly ambitious. So much has to be done within the first three years, counting from 2010:
So many programs have to be initiated, and so many projects launched. Moreover, the results from these initial initiatives are to be measured against very high targets. The department, therefore, has no time to waste. Now that it has launched itself into the PGS process, it has to move on, full speed ahead, with grit and determination: these should come not from the department's top officials alone; they have to come from the other ranks of senior officers, middle-rank career executives, and from the rank and file as well, let alone from every stakeholder wishing DoTC every success on its journey towards becoming "a world-class organization, providing integrated transport, connecting people, islands, families, communities, and the nation with the rest of the world, and constantly responding for environmentally sustainable and globally competitive transport."
