Paving the Way for Transparent and Efficient Governance via Outcome Budget: AAP Advisor Jasmine Shah

Jasmine Shah with Dy CM Manish Sisodia

In the month of November 2018, Delhi Government appointed Jasmine Shah as Vice-Chairperson of Dialogue & Development Commission of Delhi, an advisory body of Arvind Kejriwal dispensation. Jasmine, who completed a dual degree program (BTech & MTech) in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Madras, worked for almost 10 years in industry before he was appointed as an Adviser to Delhi government. In 2010, Jasmine was selected for Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowship program and completed his master’s degree in Public Administration, Urban and Social Policy; International Media, Advocacy & Communications from Columbia University, New York. As an adviser to Delhi government (Dec 2016 - Oct 2018), Jasmine worked closely with Transport and Planning departments. He also worked with the design and implementation of India’s first outcome budget released by Delhi government for the financial year 2017-18. In the month of Sept 2017, Jasmine spoke to the overseas volunteers of AAP and discussed about outcome budget. The discussion is explained in detail below.

Traditional Budget: At present, budgets from any state or centre, emphasizes on financial outlays only by specifying spending on various projects/programs. A budget speech is concluded with announcements of schemes followed by allocation of money. It does not go beyond this point and the process repeats itself in the next financial year. The impact and achievements from previous budget allotment are not known to the public.

What is Outcome Budget: Outcome budget is different from a traditional budget. It has a mechanism to measure government performance and determine outcomes after a financial year is over. For better understanding of outcome budget, let’s draw an analogy from private sectors. How do they measure their performance, what parameters do they use and do they incentivize good performance based on those parameters? Private sectors use input/output, stock margins, quality and others matrices to measure their performance. Outcome budget uses theory of change to measure outcomes. The framework easily breaks down a particular program into input, process, outputs and outcomes. It makes the government accountable and transparent.

Outputs and Outcomes: 2017-18 outcome budget of Delhi government has tangible and quantifiable outputs. These are mapped against each program in a financial year. Outcome budget contains the number, location and public usage of projects in the document. Construction of certain number of hospitals/schools/toilets are outputs of a government program. Whereas, outcome is the extent to which citizens will be benefited from these programs in a given term.

Comprehensive Outcome Budget: 34 government departments are included in 2017-18 outcome budget and their performance is measured using 1905 unique and quantifiable indicators. Beyond defining specific indicators, the report also captured baseline performance of those indicators for the previous year i.e. 2016-17. For the first time, a government has set a target for financial year 2017-18, and all indicators, baseline and targets are available with the budget document available in public domain. Perhaps, this is the only document used by Delhi government to measure its performance.

Output and outcome indicators for 2017-18 Delhi outcome budget

Example: A Government allocated Rs 400 crores to construct foot-over bridges. Compared to traditional budget, outcome budget includes the number of bridges to be built in a financial year (% of completion if completed in more than a year), their locations and their outcome, i.e. the number of people that will be using those bridges. High Level Measurement: Some of the indicators do not lead to high level of measurement e.g. how the life of commuters is affected due to the construction of foot-over bridge? Such indicators can be measured with the help of additional surveys conducted by government.

Department of Urban Development and Housing: Progress of output and outcome indicators after Review II (Sep) and Review II (Dec) of 2017-18 Delhi outcome budget

History of Outcome Budget: It is more than a decade since when the idea of outcome budget was first introduced by UPA government in 2005-06. Till date, NITI Aayog is coordinating the outcome budget. The objective is to measure the impact of outcome budget on people's life. But there were many shortfalls in the way outcome budget was dealt. One major shortcoming was that the inputs and outputs, tangible indicators and goals were not defined. Broad statements such as “what would be the outcome of mid-day meal?” were included with the answer “to reduce malnutrition in Delhi”; which is not a real indicator of spendings on mid-day meal. These loopholes were never addressed by previous governments. There was also no provision of mid-year, quarterly or monthly review.

Review: Delhi government has a provision of quarterly review of outcome budget. These meetings are held at the CM and Dy CM level. Individual departments have frequent meetings but this process makes it sure that the review is conducted once every 3 months. The review process updates indicators and also helps in finding loopholes (if any) in the system. Once a loophole is found, the process of its elimination is accelerated by experts that can help the concerned department (See outcome budgets and quarterly review reports).

Department of Labour and Education: Progress of output and outcome indicators after Review II (Sep) and Review II (Dec) of 2017-18 Delhi outcome budget

Data: Mechanism involved with outcome budget collect useful data from different departments. Tracking the data and maintaining its accuracy is another challenge. Most of the existing data with government departments is related to whether the work happened or not. Very limited data is available regarding the performance or efficiency of any program. A dashboard application will also be developed which will have all the data collected from 1905 number of indicators. As some of the data is collected on a weekly and monthly basis, this application will allow to review the performance more frequently than a quarterly review.

Environment Department: Progress of output and outcome indicators after Review II (Sep) and Review II (Dec) of 2017-18 Delhi outcome budget

Excluded Departments: 34 departments included in outcome budget do not represent the entire Delhi government. Certain departments such as Law, Training, Tax (VAT and GST collection departments) etc. are excluded from outcome budget. This is because these departments are non-service departments and do not face the citizens directly. These are general administrative departments of Delhi government which provide overall services and utilities to other departments.

Present Delhi government can be summarized as content and grammar. As part of the content, it can be asked “What is AAP doing?”. The simple answer is: building schools, clinics, hospitals, roads, waterlines, toilets, etc. A question as part of the grammar can be “How AAP is doing this?” can be answered as “outcome budget.

Outcome budget is a tool that helps in better service delivery, decision-making, program performance evaluation, communication, measurement of program effectiveness, development of a cost effective budget, measurement of accountability and better scheme management. It completely changes the objectives, planning and deliverables of governance as the entire discussion is happening around very specific indicators. We all want better infrastructure, good education and better health services. Outcome budget is measuring the performance of Delhi government and fixes its accountability.

Outcome budget showing the target missed by Delhi government. Mohalla clinic project was badly affected by power tussle in Delhi. Department of Health: Progress of output and outcome indicators after Review II (Sep) and Review II (Dec) of 2017-18 Delhi outcome budget

Watch complete video of AAP Ka Radio call (recorded on Sept 27, 2017) with Jasmine Shah.