Driving Performance from the Center

Abstract

Many governments have introduced delivery units (DUs) to tackle pressing implementation challenges, deliver on key political priorities, and better respond to citizen needs. Malaysia introduced the Performance Management and Delivery Unit (PEMANDU) in 2009. Since its inception, PEMANDU helped design and then facilitated the implementation of the National Transformation Program (NTP), a set of high-level strategic priorities of the government broken down into concrete interventions. NTP has been implemented by ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs), while PEMANDU helped track, monitor, and de-bottleneck the process. PEMANDU became the largest and one of the most prominent DUs in the world, with many countries looking to learn from its experience. Malaysia’s experience with PEMANDU is best understood in the context of the country’s broader development journey and public sector performance culture. Malaysia’s public sector development, which pre-dates PEMANDU, has created an enabling environment that set the stage for PEMANDU. Since the country’s independence in 1957, Malaysia’s public sector focused on solving development challenges facing the newly-independent country, including providing services to eradicate poverty and build up infrastructure to enable the diversified growth of its economy. The focus has been on results from the very beginning. This performance orientation created elements of a performance culture. As the public sector developed, it also gave rise to an institutional ecosystem for performance management. These elements provided the foundations on which PEMANDU could build.