Strategic planning key to effective service delivery, Says USAID Specialist
The Citizen Engagement and Capacity Building Specialist USAID Nigeria State Accountability, Transparency and Effectiveness State to State Activity Gombe State, Mr Philip Ikita has reiterated the importance of Planning to the achievement of an organisation’s goals and objectives for effective Service delivery.
Ikita reiterated this at a four-day Training of Trainers TOT on Strategic and Annual planning for Some Gombe state directors of Ministries Department and Agencies MDAs said the objective of the TOT workshop is for participants to learn about all the rudiments of strategic and annual planning so that MDAs can begin to plan and implement for better achievement.
“This workshop followed an extensive organisational assessments of MDAs by State to State activity in 2021 and it came out that most of the Ministries and Agencies did not have annual plans and strategic plans even though the State government has a ten-year strategic plan called DEVAGOM,” Ikita said.
He added that State to State activity required MDAs to have a better understanding of the strategic plan to be able to stepdown the development plan into their own plans, so as to work according to their mandate and feed into the targets of DEVAGOM.
The DAI state to state activity Consultant Mr Joseph Umoabasi also said the training is to build the capacity of participants to understand the processes involved in strategic planning that would help them understand the state development plan to cascade into medium term sector strategy.
“The MDAs need to plan based on their budgetary allocations that is the monies they have match with the plan.
‘’what is happening across the country hither to, is that you have planners planning based on unrealistic budgets: that is what we are trying to correct in this training.”
Some of the participants who spoke with our correspondent include; Haruna karu a planning officer, budget planning and development partner coordination office said the workshop had increased in his capacity in strategic planning and he would stepdown to his colleagues the knowledge acquired.
“We were trained to be trainers that means we are required to step down what we have learnt and so the first thing I will do is to sensitize my colleagues on the importance of developing a strategic planning document. Although we already have a plan for our organization this workshop had made me understand the nitty gritty of a plan development,”Karu added.
He appreciated USAID for the training and recommended that every MDAs has a plan so that even if there no commissioner there is plan for staff to implement.
Hajiya Aisha Ahmed, the head of Administration and finance Gombe state revenue service also affirmed that the workshop had enhanced her capacity on how to write mission, vision, and values of her organisation.
Ahmed, “It has been a good experience sharing putting heads together with other MDAs to develop a strategic plan.”
Also, Malam Ahmed Abubakar from the ministry of Education stressed the importance of technology in schools to meet up with global challenge.
The workshop which held at the Leilah Visitors suites Gombe state had thirty four participants drawn from the Ministries of Health,Education, Water Resources Primary Health Care Development Agency, Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Agency RUWASSA,Water Sanitation and Hygiene WASH ,Gombe State Revenue Service and Budget Planning Partner Coordination Office.
Well done sir