CEGIS Snapshot 2023-2024

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CEGIS SNAPSHOT 2023-2024

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States

2023-2024

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States

CEGIS SNAPSHOT 2023-2024

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States

ANNUAL REPORT 2023-2024

CEGIS

Snapshot

2023-2024

CONTENT

REFLECTIONS ON CEGIS’ JOURNEY

Message from the Co-founder, Ashish Dhawan

CEGIS: CONTRIBUTING TO ACCELERATING

INDIA’S DEVELOPMENT

Message from the Co-founder and Scientific Director,

Prof. Karthik Muralidharan

CEGIS: THE ORGANISATION

THE YEAR IN REVIEW: 2023-24 FOR CEGIS

KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATOR (KPI)

SURVEY IN TELANGANA

COMPETENCY-BASED CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT

OF THE OFFICE OF CGPDTM

STRENGTHENING STATE CAPACITY

THROUGH GST REVENUE AUGMENTATION

INSTITUTIONALISING DATA-DRIVEN DECISIONS

IN TAMIL NADU FINANCE DEPARTMENT

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: SETTING

FOUNDATIONS AND THE ROAD AHEAD

BUILDING CEGIS’ ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE

Message from the Head of People and Culture,

Aravinda Krishnamurthy

FOUNDERS

LEADERSHIP

ADVISORY BOARD

THE WAY AHEAD AT CEGIS

Message from the CEO, Dr. Vijay Pingale

DONORS AND PARTNERS

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States

CEGIS was born five years ago when my

interest in state finances was growing, and

Karthik Muralidharan—whose work and

dedication I have admired for many years—was

conceptualising an institution to help improve

government effectiveness across Indian states.

We both recognised that the government(s) is

the main actor when it comes to addressing

India’s growth and development challenges

at the population-level, and wanted to work

towards making this happen: this shared

vision of strengthening state capacity for

outsized impact led us to co-found CEGIS. The

importance of effective governance and state

capacity also underscores a lot of my other

initiatives at The Convergence Foundation

(TCF), which was founded in 2021 with the aim

of accelerating India’s economic growth and

development on a sustained inclusive basis.

CEGIS is now a part of TCF’s portfolio (which

includes 15+ other organisations that focus on

different socio-economic challenges).

CEGIS has witnessed rapid growth since its

inception. From being in one state (Telangana)

in 2019, we are now in five states/sub-states:

Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR), Delhi,

Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Telangana. We

are supporting the state governments through

several projects like: conducting the flagship

Key Performance Indicator (KPI) survey and

designing and instituting processes for staff

performance measurement and management

with the Panchayati Raj and Rural Development

Department in Telangana; Early Childhood

Development (ECD) Mission in BTR, Tamil

Nadu and Telangana; Revenue augmentation

project with the Government of National Capital

Territory of Delhi (GoNCTD).

I am deeply grateful for the trust that

government ofÏcials have placed in our team.

CEGIS is committed to supporting them with

valuable knowledge, insights, and practical

roadmaps to enhance capacity and create

scalable impact. I must also thank our advisory

board members for their strategic direction in

this endeavour.

As the organisation has scaled, it has become

essential to establish robust systems and

processes in Human Resources (HR), technology,

donor management and engagement. Today,

CEGIS boasts a balanced leadership team with

expertise in governance, management and

social impact. We are focused on building

organisational processes, ensuring quality control

and managing knowledge effectively.

MESSAGE FROM THE CO-FOUNDER

REFLECTIONS ON

CEGIS’ JOURNEY

CEGIS SNAPSHOT 2023-2024

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States

ANNUAL REPORT 2023-2024

We also gain strength from the abiding strength

of our donors. With their help, we have been

able to expand significantly, and their continued

support will accelerate the next phase of our

institutional growth. I thank them for all their

contributions.

Looking ahead, CEGIS plans to scale its initiatives

across more states by leveraging data effectively

and establishing the Financial Analytics Unit

(FAU) and the Data Analytics Unit (DAU). Our goal

is to help build capacity in States by setting up

institutional mechanisms in the areas of finance,

data and personnel. This approach will ensure

sustainable and impactful implementation at the

grassroots level.

Ultimately, we strive to make our support to

state governments redundant, enabling them

to independently expand and sustain our

initiatives. Achieving this requires a robust

ecosystem of governance and partnerships

across various sectors and levels. Through

collaborative efforts, we aim to significantly

impact the country’s growth and development

as we look to celebrate a century of India’s

independence. I remain optimistic about the

future and express my gratitude to everyone who

has been a part of this exciting journey.

Ashish Dhawan

Founder-CEO, TCF;

Co-founder, CEGIS

I am deeply grateful for

the trust that government

ofÏcials have placed in our

team. CEGIS is committed

to supporting them with

valuable knowledge, insights,

and practical roadmaps to

enhance capacity and create

scalable impact.

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States

As we complete five years of CEGIS’ existence, it

gives me great pleasure to share my reflections

on the journey so far and our plans and goals for

the coming years.

As we take stock of India in our 75th year

as a Sovereign Republic, we have a lot to be

proud of including being the world’s largest

democracy and one of its fastest growing

economies. Yet, one of the biggest constraints

to accelerating India’s development is the

weak delivery of essential public services like

education, health, child development, rural

and urban civic amenities, safety, and justice.

Further, a key insight from years of research,

is that weak public service delivery in India is

not just due to inadequate spending (as often

posited), but largely due to the poor translation

of spending into outcomes. This low quality

of public spending, in turn, reflects chronic

underinvestment in our public systems of

governance to deliver better development

outcomes at any given level of spending.

In 2019, I embarked upon two projects to reflect

these insights. The first was to synthesise years

of research and practical experience into a

book that aimed to provide both a conceptual

and practical roadmap for governance reforms

to strengthen India’s public systems, and

government effectiveness. The second was to

set up an organisation that could help translate

these ideas into reality by supporting state

governments who were keen on implementing

such reforms in doing so, which was the main

goal for building CEGIS.

My original plan was to do these in sequence,

but the support of Ashish Dhawan along with

his shared conviction on the importance of this

mission enabled CEGIS to be built alongside the

writing of the book. The roadmap from the book

- “Accelerating India’s Development” which

was released in March 2024, informs CEGIS’

Theory of Change (TOC) for building effective

public systems by strengthening four key

systemic components of state capacity: outcome

MESSAGE FROM THE CO-FOUNDER

CEGIS: CONTRIBUTING

TO ACCELERATING

INDIA’S DEVELOPMENT

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States

CEGIS SNAPSHOT 2023-2024

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States

measurement, personnel management,

strategic public finance, and better leveraging

markets in the public interest. Over the

past five years, CEGIS has become a mature

organisation that has already demonstrated

its ability to support state governments in

designing and implementing initiatives to

strengthen public systems.

This process of helping to translate ideas

into reality in partnership with several

outstanding state government ofÏcials has

also created a virtuous feedback loop between

‘thinking’, ‘doing’, ‘learning’, and ‘iterating’ our

interventions based on field-level feedback.

CEGIS is therefore well-positioned to

contribute to accelerating India’s development

journey.

A TRUSTED PARTNER TO

GOVERNMENTS

The biggest marker of success is that the

CEGIS team is increasingly considered a

trusted partner to state governments seeking

analytical and implementation support

for complex governance reforms. The best

compliment came from a senior state finance

department ofÏcial who has worked closely

with CEGIS, and observed to me that: “the

CEGIS teams are competent, committed,

humble, and trustworthy”. He also noted that:

“Nothing will happen without leadership

within the government; but when there is a

reforming leader or ofÏcial, the presence of

the CEGIS team makes it much more likely that

the change will happen.” This same sentiment

was expressed by a senior ofÏcial in another

state, and these observations provide a ringing

endorsement of the CEGIS value proposition

as a partner and accelerator to change-makers

within the government.

STRONG LEADERSHIP TEAM,

TALENT, AND ORGANISATIONAL

PROCESSES

At the 5-year mark, a key marker of

organisational maturity is a stable leadership

team led by CEO Vijay Pingale, who has

built an outstanding leadership team

spanning experience across a wide range of

backgrounds. Together, they provide both

stability and new perspectives and have helped

build the organisational processes and systems

that enable CEGIS to deliver against project

needs and government expectations.

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

AND ADVISORY BOARD

Another marker of organisational maturity

is the setting up of a top-quality advisory

board comprising national leaders spanning

government, private, and non-profit sectors. The

advisory board has been meeting on a quarterly

basis since Q4 2023, and provides guidance,

oversight, and support to the leadership team.

DIVERSIFIED FUNDING FROM

LONG-TERM STRATEGIC DONORS

CEGIS’ model of functioning at no cost to the

government, relies on financial support from

strategic donors with a long-term horizon

who understand the transformative impact of

improving government functioning on citizens’

lives. While set up with dedicated support

from Ashish Dhawan and The Convergence

Foundation, CEGIS’ funding base has expanded

and diversified significantly in recent years to

include several leading global funders. This

diversified funding is in turn a critical marker

of organisational maturity and stability for the

years ahead.

FUNCTIONING AS AN

‘ECOSYSTEM’ PLAYER

Since governance has a force-multiplier effect

on the effectiveness of programs in all sectors,

CEGIS hopes to catalyse transformative impact

by supporting other like-minded organisations

with a deep sectoral focus to amplify the impact

of their work through our complementary

work on strengthening public data systems,

human resource systems, and financial systems.

One example of playing such an ‘ecosystem’

enabling role was the workshop on “Data-driven

Governance” curated by CEGIS in May 2024

that was attended by several top government

ofÏcials across states and also by many partner

organisations. The event showcased CEGIS’

ability to convene decision makers and partners

around key systemic issues pertaining to better

governance.

PRIORITIES GOING FORWARD

The completion and release of the book

“Accelerating India’s Development”, and the

wide positive acclaim it has received provides

an opportune moment to catalyse both public

awareness of, and government actions to

prioritise investments in governance and

state capacity that can improve government

functioning across sectors.

Going forward, key priorities for CEGIS include

(a) continuing to deliver world-class output

against existing commitments to governments;

(b) building CEGIS’ organisational capacity

(finances, people, technology, and systems) to

cater to growing demands; (c) creating knowledge

products based on prior work that can help

accelerate the replication of successes across

geographies even without the presence of a CEGIS

team; and (d) deepening our engagement with

high-quality partner organisations to amplify

both their and our impact.

I would like to conclude this note by expressing

my deep gratitude to all of CEGIS’ supporters

and well wishers, and especially the many team

members who are dedicating their careers to

improving governance, and thereby contributing

to accelerating India’s development. We have

come a long way in the last five years, but in many

ways, we are just getting started. We look forward

to your continued support on this journey.

Prof. Karthik Muralidharan

Co-founder and Scientific Director, CEGIS;

Tata Chancellor’s Professor of Economics,

University of California, San Diego

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States

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