Performance Reporting of APA :

A Case Study Of Upazila Land Offices

Abstract

This paper focuses on implementation of the Annual Performance Agreement (APA) in the land administration and examines the effectiveness of the performance measurement system of APA. One of the important objectives of this paper is to verify the accuracy and reliability of the performance information/data of the APA report through which the performance of the Upazila land office is measured. This verification is needed in order to observe whether the land administration is showing its actual performance achievement in the performance report to ensure accountability. In doing this, both primary and secondary data were collected from 9(nine) Upazila land offices and analysed. Research findings suggest that APA is not working well in land administration. This is indicated by the gap between reported performance and actual performance. It is also found that unethical practice of manipulating performance information is going on in the APA reporting. As a result, the very concept of accountability of the public managers is not ensured, and the lofty target of providing better service to the citizens is hampered. Moreover, because of not showing the actual performance to the principal (political leaders) through performance report, wrong evaluation of the performance of the Land Administration is made, and the low productivity of the service delivery is hidden. So, the government cannot come to know the problems or causes of the non-compliance of the agreed targets and take any favourable decision or allocate resources in favour of that land office to increase productivity and meet the public demand of service delivery. So, the problem of data/information manipulation in APA's performance report urgently needs to be addressed by adopting an appropriate policy.