NAIROBI, Kenya July 4 – Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi on Tuesday paid her a courtesy call to Chief Justice Martha Koome to benchmark on the Judiciary Performance Management.
CJ Koome informed the Prime Cabinet Secretary that Judiciary was in its 7th cycle of Performance Measurement and Management having started in 2015.
‘’Despite the initial resistance experienced, today 299 Courts, Tribunals and Administrative Units have now been fully enjoined in performance management having signed performance understandings.’’
The CJ further noted that Kenya has become a beacon in Performance and other countries are paying visits to benchmark. ‘’We have had guests from Zimbabwe led by the Deputy Chief Justice and also Malawi among other local government agencies, coming to learn from us.’’
When the Judiciary launched its Performance Management and Measurement Understandings Evaluation Report last Friday, 30th June, the Prime Cabinet Secretary had been invited as a Guest Speaker but he could not make it and sent the Principal Secretary, Parliamentary Affairs, Ms. Aurelia Rono.
The CJ observed that the Judiciary has become completely data-driven where decisions are made based on data. ‘Data collection has been digitized with the most handy tool – dubbed the Daily Court Returns Template – now available online as part of the Case Tracking System. This secures the integrity of the data and enhances monitoring,’’ she remarked.
H.E. Mudavadi revealed that the Executive is working towards entrenching performance management into law, saying that the Public Service Management Bill could soon be in the works. ‘I am very passionate about enhancing performance management in the Public Service.’ He said adding that the Executive would wish to benchmark with the Judiciary which had made great strides in the same. ‘ We shall study Judiciary’s model and use some aspects to enrich the contents of the Bill before taking it to Parliament.’
Principal Secretary in the Office of the Prime Cabinet Secretary, Aurelia Rono said she ‘appreciated the work the Judiciary is doing with performance management.’’ She said the State Department would like to borrow a leaf from the Judiciary and customize some of the data collection tools.’’
Court of Appeal Judge, Justice Agnes Murgor, who is the Chairperson of the Administration of Justice and Performance Management Committee took the Prime Cabinet Secretary and his team through the highlights of the Performance Report for 2021/22. She said among the parameters assessed to measure the performance of courts are: access to justice (fees, distance, simplification of court procedures); expeditious disposal of cases; length of remand custody awaiting trial; court file integrity; certainty of trial and delivery dates; case clearance rate and case backlog reduction; court users and employees satisfaction and workload and productivity.
According to the Performance Measurement and Management Evaluation Report launched on Friday, the Supreme Court achieved a score of 100% performance; the Court of Appeal scored 87%; High Court scored 91%; the Employment and Labour Relations Court scored 93%; the Environment and Land Court achieved 97%; Magistrates Court 91%; Kadhis Court 99% and Tribunals 100%. The average performance across the Judiciary’s courts, Tribunals and administrative units was 93%.
Chief Justice Koome said that the annual public launch of the Judiciary Performance Evaluation report was one of the ways of ensuring the Judiciary ‘remains accountable to the public for the resources we are given to execute our mandate.’ The launch she added also affords the Judiciary opportunity to recognize its top performers and entrench performance management across the institution.
Other top Judiciary leaders who were with the Chief Justice during the meeting were the Deputy Chief Justice Philomena Mwiliu, the President of the Court of Appeal Justice Daniel Musinga, the Principal Judge of the High Court Justice Eric Ogola, Principal Judge and Employment and Labour Relations Court Justice Byram Ongaya, Presiding Judge of the Environment and Land Court Justice Oscar Angote as well as the Deputy Chief Registrar of the Judiciary Paul Ndemo.
