Improving the Quality of Public Expenditure in the Dominican Republic

Abstract

This book addresses the achievements,
 challenges, and opportunities to improve the quality of
 public spending. Steps to make such changes have come
 through monitoring and evaluation approaches that can be
 replicated or expanded; sectoral efforts to improve the
 performance of priority programs; Congress's use of
 information on the results of public spending; the
 implementation of performance budgeting at subnational
 levels; and the harmonization of accounting between the
 three levels of the federal government. All these aspects
 are key elements of comprehensive reform. Currently, as the
 book states, accountability focuses on achieving results
 rather than on centering attention on mere compliance with
 rules and procedures. In this context, based on a new legal
 framework, the government of Mexico has decisively promoted
 results-based management and budgeting. The Performance
 Evaluation System (SED) was finally established in 2008 with
 the institution of the principles, concepts, methodologies,
 guidelines, procedures, and systems that support its
 operation. Its adoption as a common practice in the Federal
 Public Administration (APF) process will require a gradual,
 progressive, systematic learning and continuous improvement
 that should allow performance evaluation to take root in the
 APF. This calls for consolidating the Results-Based
 Budgeting (RBB)-SED in all agencies, expanding its use and
 improving the quality of the information that feeds it.
 However, not just the APF benefit will from the
 implementation of the RBB-SED. As the publication suggests,
 the approach to an expenditure budget based on performance
 information offers Congress great opportunities to enhance
 its regulatory and supervisory functions. The improvement in
 the quality of Matrices de Indicadores para Resultados
 (MIRs), program evaluations, and their integration into the
 budgetary programming cycle also contributes to this purpose.