Establish A Departmental Review Commission
Measuring what matters. Publishing the results. Holding government to account.
Government without measurement is government without accountability. The Gambia's public sector has historically operated without the performance management infrastructure that makes governments accountable to outcomes rather than merely to inputs. Ministries receive their annual budgets and proceed to spend them. Reports are produced sometimes, but rarely in formats that enable meaningful assessment of whether the expenditure produced the intended results. Programme objectives are stated in general terms that cannot be measured. Key performance indicators, where they exist, are defined loosely enough that almost any level of activity can be claimed as progress. Resources flow to programmes that persist long after their original rationale has expired. Poorly performing officials are not identified and managed because there is no system for identifying them. High-performing departments are not recognised or learned from because no one is tracking relative performance. The gap between policy commitment and service delivery is the most tangible expression of this problem. A government can commit to building schools, and schools can be built, but whether those schools are staffed, equipped, and actually producing educated children is a different question that the current system does not systematically track. The National Builders Party will close this gap.
A Gambian public sector where every ministry knows what it is expected to achieve, has the systems to track whether it is achieving it, and faces real consequences for persistent failure. Where the public can read, in plain language, what each ministry delivered last quarter against what it promised to deliver. Where a high-performing regional education office is identified, recognised, and studied so that its practices spread to the rest of the country. Where a failing infrastructure programme is caught early, its problems diagnosed, and a corrective plan implemented before half the budget has been wasted. Where performance data shapes every budget decision. That is results-based governance. That is what the Departmental Review Commission will build.
The NBP will establish the Departmental Review Commission through a dedicated Act in the first session of the National Assembly, giving it independence, legal powers, and durability beyond any single administration.
The Act will grant the DRC full authority to request documentation and conduct inspections across all ministries, departments, and government-funded programmes. It will empower the Commission to summon government officers who fail to comply with reporting obligations, define penalties for misreporting or deliberate obstruction, and protect whistleblowers who report performance failures. Operating under the Office of the President but governed by its own independent Board of Commissioners, the DRC will be led by a Chief Review Commissioner appointed through a transparent merit-based process with National Assembly confirmation. Establishing the DRC through legislation rather than executive order gives it protection from political interference in its findings and continuity beyond the current government term.
The NBP will require every ministry to sign a Ministerial Performance Agreement at the start of each financial year, committing to specific, measurable outcomes that the DRC will hold them to every quarter.
Every Performance Agreement will contain no more than ten primary Key Performance Indicators per ministry, deliberately limited to ensure focus on the most important outcomes rather than diffusing accountability across a long list of metrics that no one seriously tracks. KPIs will be defined to the SMART standard: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Vague targets such as "improve education quality" will not be accepted as KPIs. Every KPI will be explicitly mapped to a specific National Development Plan objective, creating a complete line of sight from national ambition to ministerial target to quarterly data point. Agreements will be published so that every Gambian can see exactly what each ministry has committed to deliver.
The NBP will structure the DRC into six specialist units, each staffed with policy analysts, monitoring and evaluation experts, public finance specialists, and legal advisors with deep knowledge of their sectors.
The six units are: Health, Education and Social Services; Infrastructure and Transportation; Agriculture and Natural Resources; Finance and Economic Planning; Energy, Utilities and Environment; and Public Administration and Governance. Each unit will conduct quarterly assessments of the ministries and agencies in its portfolio, drawing on submitted performance data, third-party data sources, and field verification. Regional Field Review Officers, deployed to all seven administrative regions and equipped with mobile data collection tools, will generate the ground-truth data that connects the central performance system to reality on the ground. A dedicated Internal Research and Methodology Unit will maintain the quality and consistency of the DRC's evaluation methods across all units.
The NBP will build a National Performance Dashboard as the central digital infrastructure of the DRC, making government performance data visible in real time to decision-makers and to the public.
A secure government intranet portal, accessible to the Office of the President, Cabinet, and the National Assembly, will display real-time performance data against KPIs for every institution. Automated data ingestion from linked government systems including the Treasury Single Account, the health information system, and the education management information system will reduce the manual reporting burden on ministries. An alert system will automatically flag any institution whose performance on a defined KPI falls below the minimum threshold. A public-facing version, accessible to any Gambian on the DRC website, will show headline performance data for all ministries updated quarterly. A Geographic Information System layer will display project locations and performance data on a national map, enabling visual identification of regional service delivery disparities.
The NBP will publish a Quarterly Review Report within 30 days of the close of each quarter, giving every Gambian plain-language access to what their government delivered against what it promised.
Each quarterly report will include a colour-coded headline performance summary for every ministry, a narrative summary of key developments including significant achievements and Performance Improvement Notices issued, a sector-level analysis comparing performance across related ministries, a citizen feedback summary from quarterly satisfaction surveys disaggregated by service type and region, and a corrective action register tracking responses to previous notices. An Annual Public Sector Performance Report will be formally tabled in the National Assembly within five working days of publication, with the Chief Review Commissioner presenting findings in person to the relevant parliamentary committee. Ministers will be called to public performance accountability hearings broadcast to the nation.
The NBP will give the DRC real enforcement powers so that its findings have real consequences, because a review commission without consequences is simply an expensive document-production exercise.
When a ministry's quarterly data indicates performance below the defined threshold on any KPI, a formal Performance Improvement Notice will be issued, requiring the ministry to submit a remediation plan within 30 days. Ministries that receive a Performance Improvement Notice will have a performance condition attached to their next budget allocation, requiring defined milestones to be met before the full allocation is released. Persistent failure, defined as three consecutive quarters of significant underperformance, will trigger a mandatory programme review and may result in budget reallocation, senior leadership changes, or programme restructuring. Conversely, the DRC will formally recognise and publish the practices of high-performing departments so their approaches can be studied and replicated.
The NBP will integrate the DRC directly into the national budget preparation process, ensuring that every resource allocation decision is informed by performance evidence rather than historical patterns and political negotiation.
The DRC will submit an Annual Budget Performance Input to the Ministry of Finance during the budget preparation cycle, summarising performance findings and making evidence-based recommendations for resource reallocation, investment in high-performing programmes, and reduction or cessation of consistently underperforming ones. The Ministry of Finance will be required to formally respond to the DRC's Budget Performance Input, either accepting its recommendations or providing a published written explanation of any different decision. Budget hearings of the National Assembly Finance Committee will include the DRC's performance findings as standard reference documents, enabling legislators to question ministers on programme results alongside budget requests.
The National Builders Party will invest in the monitoring and evaluation capacity of every ministry, recognising that sustainable results-based governance requires skilled practitioners throughout the public sector, not just in the DRC itself.
Every major ministry will establish its own internal Monitoring and Evaluation Unit, supported by the DRC with training, methodology guidance, and quality certification. A National M&E Training Programme, delivered through the Gambia Institute of Public Administration in partnership with the DRC, will provide foundation and advanced courses for government M&E practitioners across all agencies. An annual National M&E Conference will bring together practitioners from government, development partners, and civil society to share learning and celebrate excellence. International learning placements will send promising M&E officers to high-performing government systems in the region to build the national practice. A government that learns from its performance data year after year will govern better in Year 5 than it did in Year 1. That is the compound dividend of accountability.
For Every Citizen
A public-facing National Performance Dashboard and a quarterly report published within 30 days of every quarter mean that you do not have to wait for an election to find out whether your government is delivering. Every ministry's performance against its own published targets is visible to you, in plain language, four times a year. If your health center has no medicines or your school has no teachers, the DRC's field officers will find it, and the report will name it. Accountability will be real, not ceremonial.
For Young Gambians
A government held accountable for outcomes rather than just inputs is a government that has to deliver the jobs programme it promised, the youth centre it committed to, and the vocational training it announced. Vague targets are not accepted as KPIs. Performance gaps are published. Budget consequences follow persistent failure. The DRC is the mechanism that turns the commitments in this manifesto from promises into obligations with published deadlines, measured results, and real consequences when they are not met.
For Every Family
A school that was built but not staffed has not delivered education. A hospital that received its budget but has no medicines has not delivered healthcare. A road project that reported completion but is impassable has not delivered transport. The DRC will find these gaps, name them publicly, and require the responsible institutions to fix them. The same Commission that catches failure also celebrates excellence and shares what high-performing departments do differently, so that every community benefits from what works best anywhere in the country.
The New National Standard in government performance is not a mystery. It is published targets, measured results, honest reporting, and real consequences when the results do not arrive. A school that was built but is not staffed has not delivered education. A hospital that received its budget but has no medicines has not delivered healthcare. A road project that reported completion but is impassable has not delivered transport. The Departmental Review Commission will find these gaps. It will name them publicly. It will require the responsible institutions to produce remediation plans and deliver on them. And when they do not, the DRC has the power to escalate, to reallocate, and to make the failure visible to the National Assembly and to every Gambian who reads its reports. This is not a punishment mechanism. It is a learning mechanism. The same Commission that catches failure celebrates excellence, shares best practice, and builds the institutional memory of what works. A government that learns from its performance data, year after year, will govern better in Year 5 than it did in Year 1. The National Builders Party will build that government.
Every Dalasi spent, and every policy implemented, must serve the interest of the Gambian people efficiently and transparently. The Departmental Review Commission will ensure it does. Every quarter. Every ministry. No exceptions.
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