Sheila Depio demonstrates to participants the six steps of accessing and using the online equity atlas during the North Eastern region meeting held in Akello hotel Soroti. EPRC Photo
The Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC), Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development (MoFPED) with support from UNICEF Uganda finalized the regional dissemination of the online National Social Service Delivery Equity Atlas.
The final dissemination was held at Fairway Hotel in Kampala in August 31, 2018, involving district officials from across the central region as well as officials from government ministries, departments and agencies.
Other disseminations were held in Mbarara for Western Uganda, Soroti for North Eastern, Jinja for Eastern and Gulu for Northern region.
The disseminations aimed at training key personnel on the use of the social services equity atlas to enable them review their performance over time with regard to select indicators in Health, Education and Water & environment.
The trainings also aimed at enabling key personnel compare their outcomes with regional counterparts or other districts in the country with whom they receive similar funding or have similar socio-economic conditions.
Further, the trainings were meant to drive personnel to utilize the atlas as a tool to plan, budget and subsequently improve delivery of social services.
As part of the global public finance for children initiative, UNICEF supported EPRC and MoFPED to develop the social equity atlas as one of the tools to monitor effective delivery of national programs affecting children and other vulnerable groups across Uganda.
It was first launched in October 26, 2016 and the digital version was released in January 2018.
The online version can be accessed on Ministry of Finance, Unicef, and EPRC websites among others.
Sheila Depio, a Research Analyst with EPRC informed the participants that the atlas measures education indicators such as enrollment, intake, completion, performance, teacher ratio, stance ratio and desk ratio.
Other indicators that the atlas measures include the WASH indicators (Hand washing coverage, access to water, functionality of water sources, sanitation score) and public infrastructure such as markets.
During all the disseminations, Depio demonstrated to participants the six steps of accessing and using the online social service equity delivery atlas
Performance Based Budgeting
The disseminations also included a presentation by Noeline Gwokyalya an Official working with the Budget Monitoring and Accountability Unit, Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development.
She shared insights on Performance Based Budgeting (PBB) a new approach by government that seeks to promote high quality, client-responsive public service that maximizes value for money.
In the PBB approach, funds are distributed by programme or functional area and based on the nature of the activities performed by the programme.
PBB approach unlike line-item/output based budgeting provides more concrete information to the Cabinet on performance, which helps in setting future targets and priorities.