By Sheku Sackoh Turay
The National Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate (NaMED) officially launched the National Monitoring and Evaluation Management Information System (NaMEMIS) at the Freetown City council auditorium on Tuesday 19th December, 2023.
Chernor Bah, Minister of Information and Civic Education who served as the Chairman of the occasion reiterated the essence of digitalizing government institutions especially in terms of monitoring and Evaluation and records management. He emphasised that, since we are living in a global village, government needs to go digital. “Our Management and information systems has to go digital”. The Minister stated.
The Chief Minister, Dr. David Moinina Sengeh the keynote speaker, officially launched the NaMEMIS instrument on behalf of Government as the brain of innovation and digitalizing Government activities. David Sengeh commenced by emphasising about the importance of the day as other speakers mentioned in their statements.
The implementation of the system will enhance accountability and transparency in government institutions MDA’s to be specific.
“To underline what accountability in governance is, His Excellency, President Dr. Julius Maada Bio, made a commitment to make sure, we continue to work on improving efficiency, through transparency and accountability. This is why under his big five, he speaks about public sector reform and justice sector reforms. We can’t have those reforms without transparent systems who can hold us accountable”. Chief Minister mentioned.
According to the Chief Minister, Government through the establishment of NaMED bill that was drafted should be read in parliament over the next couple of weeks. As being empower to do everything he can, he is working closely with the Ministry of Finance and Planning and all other MDA’s to ensure that all government and donor funds, all resources received by MDA’s and local councils are well spent to achieve the desire results.
These commitments require policy decisions and those policy decisions have already been highlighted by the Ministry of Finance and Planning
“The government will not release resources to implementing agencies if you do not write you monitoring report”. He conclude.
Dr. Abu Kargbo, from the World Bank Sierra Leone office talked about the importance of M&E in development interventions in Sierra Leone. He said they used M&E as a systems that gives warning and instructions, then after the implementations, Monitoring and Evaluations comes in. As a World Bank, monitoring is very essential to the institution.
Bockarie Kaloko, Deputy Minister of Finance expressed his gratitude to NaMED for the launching of such system which will enhance the work of the ministry by monitoring all funded projects, subventions, allocations et al. He noted that, the launched of NaMEMIS seems as it’s a delegation given to them. He concluded by saying, they’re ready to work with NaMED to achieve their aims and objectives as an MDA.
