The Colloquium that was a follow-on from the discussion held in Kandalama regarding KPIs was conducted by Dimuthu Ratnadiwakara and Shamistra Soysa.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are those that help in measuring the success of the day to day activities of an organization. This means that the KPIs would lead to KRIs.

First the mission statement was reviewed, with comment on the structure to highlight the important areas.

Dimuthu Ratnadiwakara noted the critical success factor that would feed into the strategies and thereby facilitate the mission statement. However, critical success factors cannot be measured and hence can prove to be problamatic.

Rohan Samarajiva noted that the concept of productive partnerships need to be included in the critical success factors.

Dimuthu Ratnadiwakara noted that the Performance Indicators (PIs) are the factors that can be measured. However, KPIs are what drive the PIs.

Shamistra Soysa noted that a new KRI had been included. This was the ration of regular employees to non- regular employees.

Rohan Samarajiva noted that this is not comprehensive to our needs. As all persons working for the organization may not indicate the type of employment.

Helani Galpaya noted that maybe this wording should be changed to be destination specific.

Harsha de Silva noted that this too may not prove to be very accurate.

Rohan Samarajiva noted that maybe LIRNEasia can adopt a system of FTEs. Thereby, having a minimum number of personnel from each country.

Nirmali questioned if this would increase the efficiency of the research done by LIRNEasia. Rohan Samarajiva responded saying that it does have an impact as the location and geographical proximity of the personnel is crucial to the outlook they would have on the gound situation.

Dimuthu Ratnadiwakara questioned how the consultants who worked repeatedly on projects will be measured.

Helani Galpaya responded saying that this was a personnel indicator. She also proposed that Chanuka Wattegama should spearhead this indicator.

Rohan Samarajiva noted that LIRNEasia will not be submiting many proposals but if connect asia comes up it should be useful.

He also noted that the increase in the overall budget should be included.

Harsha de Silva noted that there should be two indicators. One for the overall budget that is cited. And another that will indicate how much of this overall budget was utilised on a per person basis.

However, merely counting the numbers cannot be taken as the success of a policy intervention.

Sujatha Gamage noted that counting the number of interventions should be one way to quantify this. Ayesha Zainudeen noted that maybe each intervention can be grouped under a theme so making the process of quantifying success more meaningful.

Harsha de Silva noted that branding of LIRNEasia as an organization and the personnel within it are crucial and need to be quantified.

Rohan Samarajiva questioned which of the KPIs is the most important. Harsha de Silva and Helani Galpaya noted that the number of consultation papers and the number of responses made to the consultation papers as the most important. Rohan Samarajiva argued that this was not the case. Stating that the media coverage would be more significant.

He suggested that if so, the KPI-number of consultation papers should be renamed to instead reflect the number of policy interventions.

Harsha de Silva noted that there seems to be no clear distinction between KPIs and KRIs.

Nirmali noted that the number of invited talks seems to be more a KRI than a KPI, as one has little control over the outcome. Rohan Samarajiva responded saying that it need not be so, as there is a great deal of background work the organization does to get that invitation. He also noted that often been invited to event facilitates the growing of the organization.

Dimuthu Ratnadiwakara noted that within our type of organizations it is difficult to have day to day indicator measures. This makes compiling KPIs a difficult task.

Sujatha Gamage noted that a distinction should be drawn between a regional/ international event and one that would be the result of intervention.

Natasha Udugama noted that maybe the dissemination of event need to be included as a KPI as well. Dimuthu Ratnadiwakara noted that it can be included as a subset within the KPI-number of stories.

In regard to the KPI- citation, what would be the definition?

Helani Galpaya noted that citations in newspaper/ magazine articles were as important as citations in journals.

Dimuthu Ratnadiwakara then drew attention to the PIs.

Rohan Samarajiva noted that in citing the number of papers per persons would be difficult as there maybe a large number if authors on one paper. He noted that this can be achieved through a weightin system, giving each author due credit.

Harsha de Silva argued that this is wrong as most of the papers done by LIRNEasia are hung on previous data. This means that all those involved in the process need to be given due credit.

Rohan Samarajiva noted that the percentage can be used as a threshold to show the importance of each contribution. This could maybe feed into a system where if one is below a ‘floor’ percentage would be included as an acknowledgement.

Harsha de Silva noted that a distinction need to be drawn between referencing and giving credit as a co-author. He stated that if there was an intellectual contribution made to the paper at the time they need to be co-authors.

Rohan Samarajiva noted that the percentage methodology would be useful to resolve this problem.

Harsha de Silva suggested that this threshold should be from 15-20%.

Rohan Samarajiva noted that the order of which the authors are listed are also important. But this too can be resolved through the percentage methodology.