At CEGIS, we believe that four fundamental principles should underpin effective governance. And we work with state governments to put these principles into practice across sectors. 

Outcome measurement
Across sectors, state governments largely focus on input-based programme implementation instead of improving outcomes. This is partly because there simply is a lack of accurate, regular and representative data on outcomes or beneficiary experience of government-provided benefits and services. CEGIS helps state governments in not just collecting this type of data, but also improving the quality of their administrative data, and incorporating insights from this data into government goal-setting, performance monitoring and general functioning. 

Personnel management
High-performing organisations give autonomy to frontline staff and managers on how to do their job—but hold them accountable to outcomes. Yet most governments in India do the opposite: micro-managing officials on process, with no accountability for outcomes. CEGIS aims to transform the organisational culture of state governments by using data from high-quality outcome measurement for goal setting and accountability of managers and staff based on improving outcomes. 

Public finance

Across India, the traditional solution to ailing public services and programmes has been greater spending. Yet research has shown that simply spending more on sectors like education and health does not necessarily improve learning or health outcomes. CEGIS works with state governments to both improve their quality of public expenditure and mobilise revenues. We help governments raise revenues without hurting economic activity, while allocating funds in a way that rewards departments for performance, efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

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State and Markets

While most services are largely market driven, there is limited State capacity to manage their market interfaces. Governments have three distinct roles in the service delivery ecosystem – policy, provision and regulation. While Governments have traditionally focused more on the “provision” function, a combination of fiscal constraints, efficiency differential and incentive mismatches make it important for the State to engage with non-State actors (both for and not for profit) through appropriate models. CEGIS supports Governments in improving capacities for such engagement on public procurement, regulation and policy margins. This will help States in developing service delivery ecosystems in view of both market and government (in)efficiencies. 

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Sectors
These principles can and should be applied across a broad range of government departments and sectors—but we believe they will be especially powerful when applied to these sectors: 

Education 
Better education is the foundation of development. Yet, across India, despite significant expenditure, states have struggled to improve learning outcomes of children. At CEGIS, we work with state governments to improve learning outcomes through outcome measurement, personnel management and strategic budgeting. In practice, this could mean helping a state education department invest in a measurement tool that tracks children’s learning outcomes across the state and then use this data to guide personnel management and public expenditure. 

Nutrition 

Like education, nutrition is foundational for development. And like with education, Indian states fare poorly in delivering basic nutrition to its children. CEGIS hopes to address this by working with state governments to orient systems, processes, personnel and budgets towards improving nutrition outcomes. For example, this could mean introducing a  robust data collection system to track nutrition outcomes, incentivise frontline workers (Anganwadi workers) to report accurate data, and establish processes to ensure that nutrition outcomes are the focus of all department activities.

Local governance 

The quality of local governance is an important determinant for service delivery. While Constitutional Amendments and Finance Commissions have formalised and expanded the role of local governments in service delivery, evaluating the quality of local service delivery is a challenge across states. CEGIS supports states in improving the performance and accountability of local governments by helping establish cost-effective and robust systems to define, evaluate and incentivize performance. For instance, in an ongoing project in Telangana, we are designing and implementing holistic performance assessment systems for Junior Panchayat Secretaries to help deliver better outcomes in villages across the state.