In February of 2009, I traveled from the U.S to begin my assignment as MLI Country Lead for Ethiopia. As a native of Ethiopia and a former employee of the Ministry of Health, I felt particularly suited for this new role. The Ministerial team at the Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) had already prioritized the Balanced Scorecard approach as the key area of MLI technical support. They conveyed to me that that the successful implementation of the Balanced Scorecard will be critical to significantly improving performance throughout the health system. The Balanced Scorecard is an important tool for planning, monitoring and managing health sector development activities efficiently and effectively which will, in turn, positively impact health sector goals.

The FMOH has made remarkable achievements through a pilot implementation of the BSC at the federal level in the past two years, and they have been eager to scale-up the BSC activities to cover the entire health sector. As a representative of MLI, I came on board to lead, coordinate and facilitate the implementation of these activities in Ethiopia. The FMOH and MLI recently made an official announcement of the selection of the Balanced Scorecard Institute (BSCI) to begin the BSC assignment in Ethiopia. The two consultants from BSCI are scheduled to be on the ground in Ethiopia on August 10 to begin working with the Policy and Planning Directorate and myself.

The FMOH is now introducing the Business processes Reengineering (BPR) as one of the critical reforms to bring about fundamental and dramatic changes in the performance of the sector. As a result of this, I am anticipating that there could be many competing priorities at FMOH during this busy time; however, I feel that the Policy and Planning Directorate will provide guidance to  engage the core team and health sector staff at all levels to focus on the successful implementation of BSC.