A Review of Highway Agencies in the South Asia Region

A Review of Highway Agencies in the South Asia Region
The indicators framework has been divided into seven categories:
(i) Mandate, Policy and Legal Framework: The indicators under this category are intended
to capture the vision/mission statement of the highways agency and to find out if a formal
road policy, backed by a legal and regulatory framework, has been laid down covering
development, asset management and safety.
(ii) Planning: Indicators in this category are expected to inform planning capabilities
of the highway agency by assessing the existence of long- and short-term investment
plans for both development and maintenance of their road network and asset
management system.
(iii) Capacity: Under this category, indicators are intended to capture the highway agency’s
strength to deliver its mandate by knowing outputs of the budget, expenditure,
projects delivery, skill development strategies, and human resource management.
(iv) Efficiency: The indicators under this category would capture the agency’s ability to
evolve cost effective strategies in developing the road programs and efficient contract
administration to contain time and cost overruns during the implementation.
Monitoring the ‘asset value’ of the network is one such indicator.
(v) Quality of Road Network: The indicators under this category are intended to assess
the agency’s ability to provide a safer, greener, reliable and more comfortable road network.
The indicators suggest the shifting of focus from a traditional input- and process-based one
to outcome- and user-oriented measures, for example, capturing the degree of congestion,
network quality index, and accident hazards.
(vi) Private Sector Participation: The indicators under this category intend to assess the
road agency’s effort to attract and promote private sector financing of the road sector.
(vii) Governance: The indicators under this category are intended to capture initiatives such
as right to/freedom of information, e-procurement, website, publishing of annual
reports, road user satisfaction surveys, and grievance redressal mechanisms.
It is important to note that the proposed framework is generic and agencies are advised to
review and customize this framework first, based on their specific mandate and vision. For
example, for a state road corporation which may be responsible for the development of only
selected state highways, indicators related to state level policy and regulations might not
be very relevant. Similarly if the agency is responsible for delivering any specific scheme/
program, the framework and indicators should be closely linked to the performance of those
programs.
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