ENHANCING VISIBILITY AND MONITORING IN AGRICULTURE, TELANGANA

CEGIS has engaged with the Department of Agriculture, Government of Telangana, to build a robust system of performance management for frontline functionaries. The objective was to improve the department's visibility of time spent on various activities to streamline workload and offer targeted support. Through extensive field visits and interactions with department officials, CEGIS developed a comprehensive performance measurement system by identifying Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Key Result Areas (KRAs) for Agriculture Extension Officers (AEOs). We conceptualised a mobile application named “Activity Logger” for AEOs to report daily activities. This provided real-time data for performance management and enabled the department to engage with officials across various day-to-day activities. The performance measurement system used metrics familiar to the officials and objectively verifiable by the department to build user confidence and improve adoption. This robust system has since expanded to other cadres of officials within the department, including Mandal Agricultural Officers (MAOs), Assistant Directors of Agriculture (ADAs) and District Agricultural Officers (DAOs) at the mandal and district levels. Interactive dashboards were developed for performance visualisation, aiming to encourage positive behaviour through performance awards and operational reviews. An interesting use case of this system is the recent addition of the Fertilizer Inventory Verification System (FIVeS) module, designed to provide real-time tracking and monitoring of fertiliser positions in the state by improving inspection frequency at the point of sale by frontline officials.