Victoria Falls goes online on the Office of the President and Cabinet dashboard

VICTORIA Falls City Council has started implementing the Whole of Government Performance Management System where all its programmes and activities will be uploaded on the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) dashboard,

Granted city status by President Mnangagwa in 2019, Victoria Falls is the only city in Matabeleland North and has taken the lead in the region in implementing the system, which will be used in measuring the performance of officers and projects feeding into the national development agenda.

The city is conducting a three-day training workshop that is being facilitated by Mr Noel Mushangwe and Mr Brian Sango who are from Mutare City Council and were seconded by the OPC as part of the Whole of Government Performance Management System.

In his welcoming remarks, Victoria Falls City Council Town Clerk Mr Ronnie Dube said the workshop was an opportunity to come together and continue to track performance using best practices.

“Today marks a pivotal moment as we are gathered to take our performance management to a higher level, to explore strategic linkages in performance monitoring and management through the Whole of Government approach in our bid to meet the expectation of the National Development Strategy,” he said.

“In an era of increasing complexity and evolving challenges, the need for effective critical innovative thinking in performance management has never been more critical.

“As stewards of public trust and resources it is mandatory for us to continuously strive for excellence, accountability and transparency in our operations and service delivery in order to ensure the City of Victoria Falls becomes a smart and sustainable tourism destination of choice by 2030,” said Mr Dube.

He said the enrolment into the Whole of Government System will foster a culture of performance excellence within the city programmes and result in performance optimisation and achievement of measurable outcomes.

Mr Dube said the city is inspired to achieve more.

“By leveraging the Call to Action by President Mnangagwa exploiting our expertise and experiences, we can process and ultimately enhance our ability to deliver value to citizens,” he said.

The city’s chamber secretary Ms Kholwani Mangena said the programme also fosters a sister-sister working environment between local authorities.

The city’s monitoring and evaluation officer Mr Mthokozisi Ngwenya said the programme seeks to make sure all Government programmes and projects are supposed to be monitored from the President’s Office where all state agencies are expected to input their projects.

“All state entities have to input their programmes and project performances to show progress on the dashboard. This is assisting us to go live, which we will do after the workshop,” he said.

“All along we have been doing our programmes offline and on the 29th of February, our dashboard will be appearing in the system.

“This means a lot to us as a local authority and will help us improve performance and cascade our programmes. Now that the system is computerised it is easy to track and make corrective measures as well as reach our targets,” said Mr Ngwenya.

He said the programme also promotes accountability and helps prevent corruption in the local authority, as well as striking a balance in all activities that will be visible to the Government in real-time.

The system will also promote real-time reporting and reduce false reporting where in some instances local authorities would fail to submit completed reports.

Mr Ngwenya said with the new system it will be easy for the council to flag projects that are of national interest.

This will also help the Government in its oversight role and administration of local authorities.