Government entities often compete to highlight their accomplishments, sometimes elevating routine activities into successful achievements, while researchers, media professionals, and citizens have limited means to objectively assess their actual performance. When accurately prepared and transparently published, the annual report stands as a key instrument for gaining a comprehensive understanding of an entity’s mandate, operations, projects, initiatives, allocated budgets, and revenues from fees and fines, thereby enabling an informed assessment of whether the entity is achieving its objectives or falling short. After a lengthy process, a binding guideline for preparing annual reports for public entities has finally been issued by the Performance Measurement Center “Adaa”, replacing the advisory guide developed by the Institute of Public Administration over two decades ago. What distinguishes this new framework is its requirement to include two key elements in annual reports: First, signed project contracts, their costs, implementation progress, work completed during the year, completion rates, names of executing contractors, and other relevant details. Second, the annual plan at the beginning of the year, based on precise performance measurement indicators, followed by a numerical year-end disclosure of what has been achieved and its percentage against planned targets. Entities that fail to establish accurate plans and well-designed performance indicators at the start of the year, or that produce lengthy, well-designed but substantively hollow and impractical strategies, will face significant difficulties at the end of the year when preparing the annual report, and a real challenge starting from the 2022 fiscal year, which marks the official date for mandatory compliance with “Adaa”. It is expected that, in the future, Shura Council members’ observations and critiques of public entities during the review of their annual reports will increasingly focus on the quality of planning and the realism of performance indicators, whether targets have been achieved, the execution of project contracts, and the extent of compliance with the templates and requirements of the “Adaa” guide. Drawing on extensive experience in preparing annual reports for eight governmental and private entities over several years, I have several detailed observations regarding the “Adaa” guide, including, for example, the absence of clear criteria defining which contracts should be included—particularly in large ministries such as Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, and Ministry of Municipal, Rural Affairs and Housing—the placement of the overall overview of the entity at the end of the report rather than at the beginning, which contradicts logical sequencing, as well as the lack of clear definitions distinguishing between projects and initiatives. The “Adaa” guide states: “Public entities may publish their annual report or its contents for the public.” In the interest of transparency, I propose revising this provision to read: “Public entities must publish their annual report via their official website and provide it to the media, except for matters of a confidential nature and sensitive issues related to other government entities.” It should be noted that 76% of government entities have not updated their annual reports on their websites for years or do not publish any reports at all, while only 24% have released recent reports, according to a newspaper report. This is a reality that must change to ensure effective communication between each entity and its audience, especially given the significant progress in most government services, which should be communicated in a clear, balanced, and credible manner, without exaggeration.

This article was publishedin AL Riyadh newspaper

In the print edition, on March 2, 2022 .