Reliable Data is Necessary for Establishing an Accountable and Transparent Public Administration

Establishing an accountable and transparent administration is one of the main mottos of the previous and present governments of Afghanistan. This should be the main goal in countries experiencing a prolonged period of political and economic instability such as Afghanistan. President Ashraf Ghani has been working tirelessly to establish an efficient, responsible, accountable and transparent public administration. He is going to run with such a promise in the next presidential elections. However, this should be the main agenda of any future government of Afghanistan no matter who will be leading it. 

To measure the attainment of objectives of various government departments, there is a dire need for reliable data. For instance, Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL) may aims at achieving a 6% growth every year, but measuring the attainment of this objective requires good quality data. Same is true for any promise the government or any other organization make as well as measuring the impact of programs and projects. 

The ministries only report how much budget they spent, which does not mean much. More spendings do not necessarily mean efficient spending or achievement of objectives. They should report the efficiency of spending budget and the extent to which the stated objectives are achieved. For this, they need to collect necessary data and information not only for their own need, but also considering the needs of various stakeholders. 

President Ghani claims to have improved the trade composition of Afghanistan. I wanted to check, whether the president's claim is true and how the trade matrix has changed. I downloaded data from CSO (now NSIA) and FAOSTAT, but found many problems and inconsistencies in the data. This demotivated me to invest time and efforts on unreliable data. Many other colleagues faced similar problems while doing academic research and evaluations. Hence, it is necessary for the government to invest in establishing a comprehensive, modern and reliable system of data collection and sharing so that the various stakeholders obtain their required data. In the past, data was collected from various ministries for the purpose of planning and the main stakeholder was the government itself. Now, the range of stakeholders has expanded and include several stakeholders such as researchers, universities, development organizations, businesses, etc. Unfortunately, CSO failed to provide for the data needs of various stakeholders. 

Despite the technological breakthrough, neither CSO nor MAIL could establish an efficient online data sharing portal for easily accessing the required data in desired formats. CSO and MAIL may have data in hard forms, but they should convert it into soft within the framework of an online platform or database. I remember that the CountrySTAT project of FAO build a very good website for MAIL in 2013, which could serve as an online data portal of agricultural data on various indicators. Unfortunately, data on few indicators is included in the website, and it is not timely updated afterwards. This is really a loss of resources and opportunities by MAIL. It is still not very late, MAIL can make use of that website in cooperation with CSO 

(here is the website: http://afghanistan.countrystat.org)

In summary, reliable data collection, processing and publishing system that can serve the needs of various stakeholders is necessary for ensuring an accountable and transparent public administration in Afghanistan. 

The purpose of this short note is not to teach the importance of data, but to call on the authorities to perform their job and address the data needs of all stakeholders. Otherwise, no one can believe your achievements and failures. 

Note: If you are interested in understanding the current situation and problems of food and agricultural statistics system in Afghanistan, please the report I wrote for FAO in 2013 below:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280563336_Panorama_Report_of_Afghanistan_A_Review_of_Afghanistan's_Food_and_Agricultural_Statistics_System