The Government statistician, Professor Samuel Kobina Annim, has recommended the strengthening of policy capacity to accelerate national development.
He defined policy capacity as equipping persons responsible for decision making and the general public to distinguish between the likelihood of a policy being successful or not.
ProfessorAnnim was speaking at a public lecture on the topic “Conceptualisation of National Policies issues of Capacity and Practice,” organised by the management of the Central University College in Accra, on Wednesday.
He saidit has become imperative for the country to focus on designing data informed policies and put structures in place to access the outcome and impact of policies.
The Government Statisticianidentifiedgaps in the country’s policy capacity and practice including the lack of institutional frameworks and capacity for auditing national policies.
Prof. Annim stressed that happiness, livelihood transformation and economic development were yet to be achieved.
The Government Statistician proffered eight indicators that both academics making policy recommendations and policy makers evaluating policies could utilised.
He mentioned some of them as policy space, instruments and targets, outcome and impact, sequence and hierarchy, calibration, mixes, times, cost-benefit analyst and data-base one, rate of progress and endline.
Professor Annim said there was lack of formal and in-service training in building human capacity for policy making and non-availability of national frameworks for assessing policy options.
That, he said, has resulted in the effect of the deployment of policy directives without alternatives, absence of the conduct of cost-benefit analysis in assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of proposed policies, weakness in institutional capacity in interrogating policy proposals and nonexistence of national institutions.
Prof. Annim called for the development of a national criteria for assessing the effectiveness of policies, integration of policy science into academic programmes and establishment of an independent National Data Policy Institute.
Highlighting on the country’s economic development experience, he said, there were lack of a macroeconomic toolbox for assessing performance, in Gross Domestic Product growth and other key macroeconomic variables including inequality, tax performance and trends and patterns in labour statistics.
The Vice-Chancellor of the Central University College, Professor Bill Puplampu, who chaired the lecture, lauded Professor Annim, and urged the tertiary institutions and other stakeholders to embrace the lecture, for national development in the country.
BY DANIEL AMOO
