Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The expert technical committee of the National Democratic Foundation (NDF) has shown dissatisfaction and hesitation to recognize the PILDAT’s score card on Assessment of the Quality of Governance of the Federal Government, here on Wednesday.

It is pertinent to mention that the NDF committee has one leading credible expert on the subject matter who is among the pioneers in introducing score card and its methodology in Pakistan and who has produced an NDF review paper for PILDAT’s score card. As part of the NDF review paper, the technical committee appreciated the efforts of PILDAT in bringing up key issues of governance at the federal and the provincial levels through constructing a score card. However, after a thorough review, it is concluded that the scorecard can be made more scientifically sound for wider acceptance and use by relevant stakeholders if the methodological constraints were addressed properly, by taking into account shortcomings found as part of this review process and removing bias throughout the analytical framework of PILDAT’s score card.

The NDF review paper offers a variety of thoughts on how these improvements can be made while keeping in view the critical aspects of data and methods. Lastly, it is overly emphasised that all type of data and tested methodology including raw and processed data and questionnaire must be made public for wider understanding and scrutiny – a major shortcoming of PILDAT’s score card. At this stage, it would not be wise to recommend acceptance, recognition and/or advocacy of this scorecard by the NDF.

The Chairman NDF, Kanwar Muhammad Dilshad, highlighted that the National Democratic Foundation (NDF) promotes open, resilient, democratic and sustainable mechanisms at all tiers of governance by bridging the research, policy, implementation and advocacy gaps with a key focus on: Open Governance, Social Accountability, Local Governance System and safeguarding Consumer Rights, Arbitration, Partnership and also employing the Public Interest Litigation in the larger public interest.

NDF believes in supporting the efforts of all institutions and stakeholders by maintaining its own independence with impartial and apolitical role. He added that NDF’s Core Research Group holds periodic meetings to review and assess the latest work of stakeholder institutions prior to determine the effectiveness of the contents and decision making for its position / role over the matter concerned.

Kanwar Dilshad emphasised further that NDF experts selected PILDAT’s score card and decided to examine it thoroughly and publish a review paper keeping in view the importance of the document. Therefore, a three- member expert committee was formed by NDF and assigned the task during April 2016 with the aim to support a rationale decision at NDF prior to taking any position on PILDAT’s score card.