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During this author’s tenure as Executive Director at the Public Investment Management Secretariat (PIMSEC), project teams, ministry officials and development partners occasionally found themselves discussing someone who never actually attended a meeting. She never submitted a project proposal, never spoke during stakeholder consultations, and never appeared on any organisational chart. Yet she often became one of the most important people in the room. Her name was Miss Tiny.

She was entirely fictional, but the question she represented was very real. Whenever a project became increasingly complicated, costs escalated unexpectedly, or competing priorities emerged, this author would often ask a provocatively simple question: “How does this affect Miss Tiny?” Was the project genuinely improving her quality of life, or was it simply consuming scarce public resources without delivering meaningful benefits? Was she receiving value for the taxes she paid every time she bought a loaf of bread, a small bag of flour, or a box of matches? If the project was completed successfully, would life become just a little easier for her, or would it become another expensive monument to poor planning?

Sometimes the question became even more personal. If this project were properly prepared, professionally managed and delivered without unnecessary delays or cost overruns, would Miss Tiny perhaps have enough money left in her weekly budget to indulge in what she considered a luxury—a single tin of condensed milk to sweeten her morning cup of tea? To many Jamaicans, that sounds like a trivial purchase. To households living on the economic margins, however, even the smallest comfort often represents careful budgeting and quiet sacrifice. Good public investment management is ultimately about creating more opportunities for ordinary citizens to enjoy those small victories.

Miss Tiny was not one individual. She represented every Jamaican living quietly on the edge of financial survival, whose daily life is influenced by decisions made inside air-conditioned boardrooms, ministry conference rooms and Cabinet offices many miles away. She reminded officials that behind every business case, procurement plan and capital budget stood a real human being waiting to discover whether government spending would make her life better—or merely more expensive.

Imagine, then, that “Miss Tiny” actually exists. She is sixty-five years old and lives in Tavares Gardens, a little-known inner-city community tucked away in Kingston. It is not a place that regularly appears in glossy tourism brochures or evening newscasts, yet communities like this quietly remind us where the true success or failure of government policy is ultimately measured.

Miss Tiny raised three children in a modest one-room board house. They are now adults with families and struggles of their own, helping when they can, but unable to provide regular financial support. She has spent most of her life surviving through what Jamaicans affectionately call “the hustle.” She buys and sells whatever opportunities present themselves. Some weeks it may be fruits purchased from Coronation Market. Other weeks she sells small household items, snacks or toiletries. She has no guaranteed salary, no pension that provides comfort, and no certainty about what tomorrow’s earnings will be. Every dollar matters because every dollar already has a purpose before she earns it.

Her weekly shopping basket reflects that reality. Rice. Cornmeal. Flour. Cooking oil. Sugar. Chicken back. Turkey neck. Salt fish. Perhaps a few seasonings if prices permit. These are among the affordable staples that underpin many low-income Jamaican households, reflecting consumption patterns identified by Jamaica’s Statistical Institute (STATIN). Through remarkable ingenuity, they become hearty meals that stretch limited incomes far beyond what most people would imagine possible. Condensed milk rarely makes the list.

It is the item she pauses to admire on the supermarket shelf before quietly placing it back because this week there is simply no room in the budget.

Miss Tiny has never heard the term Public Investment Management. She could not explain cost-benefit analysis, gateway reviews, portfolio management, procurement planning or risk registers. Very few Jamaicans have a greater stake in whether those disciplines are practised well.

One Tuesday morning, heavy equipment arrives outside her lane. Contractors begin excavating the narrow roadway to replace ageing water mains. The work is noisy, dusty and disruptive, but Miss Tiny understands that infrastructure occasionally requires inconvenience. After several months, the project is completed. The road is resurfaced beautifully. For the first time in years puddles disappear after heavy rain, mosquitoes have no breeding ground, taxis can enter the community more easily, and elderly residents no longer have to navigate broken asphalt. She smiles. 

Finally, someone thought about people like her.

Three months later another contractor arrives.

This time the road must be excavated again because another government agency has begun laying fibre-optic conduits.

Several months after that, yet another project begins. Drainage improvements require additional excavation. Fresh asphalt becomes broken asphalt once more. Residents again endure dust, blocked entrances, traffic diversions, heavy machinery and months of inconvenience.

Each project is worthwhile on its own. Better water. Better telecommunications. Better drainage. Nobody disputes their value. The question is why they were not coordinated.

Why pave the road before replacing the pipes beneath it? Why install fibre after the asphalt has already been laid? Why mobilise three different contractors at three different times when one coordinated programme could have completed all three investments before resurfacing the road just once?

Miss Tiny may never use the phrase “whole-of-government coordination,” but she certainly understands waste when she sees it.

The irony is that the story rarely ends with inconvenience alone. Every unnecessary redesign, avoidable variation, duplicated mobilisation of contractors and every month of delay eventually carries a financial cost. Governments do not possess endless reserves of money waiting to rescue poorly managed projects. When one project exceeds its budget because of weak planning or poor coordination, additional funds usually have to come from somewhere else within an already constrained national budget.

That is where Miss Tiny quietly re-enters the story.

The tens of millions required to correct avoidable mistakes cannot simultaneously repair another health centre, improve another school, rehabilitate another police station or expand another social assistance programme. Public finance is ultimately about choices. Every dollar spent correcting preventable errors is a dollar unavailable to improve someone else’s quality of life.

Miss Tiny never reads budget estimates, but she experiences the consequences. The community clinic delays replacing ageing equipment. Or the market renovation is postponed. Or the social programme that supplements vulnerable seniors cannot expand because fiscal space has quietly disappeared.

The project may eventually be completed.

Value for money, however, may already have been lost.

This is precisely why countries that consistently achieve better infrastructure outcomes invest so heavily in project preparation rather than simply project execution. The World Bank has repeatedly found that governments with stronger public investment management systems deliver infrastructure more efficiently, experience fewer cost overruns and delays, and generate greater economic and social returns from every public dollar invested. The lesson is remarkably consistent across developed and developing countries alike. Governments rarely spend too much because they build. More often, they spend too much because they build inefficiently.

That is why public investment management should never be dismissed as merely another bureaucratic exercise. Proper project selection, rigorous business cases, mature engineering designs, realistic budgets, effective risk management, stakeholder consultation and coordinated implementation are not administrative luxuries. They are among government’s most powerful anti-poverty tools because they maximise the value received from scarce public resources.

The temptation in politics is often to celebrate the groundbreaking ceremony rather than the planning meeting. Yet experienced project professionals understand that every month invested in careful preparation can prevent multiple months of delay during construction. This author’s long-held position has been that governments should devote approximately 18-24 months to serious project preparation before inviting contractors onto a construction site. That recommendation is not arbitrary. International experience suggests that high-performing infrastructure programmes invest considerable time upfront in project identification, feasibility studies, environmental assessments, engineering design, stakeholder consultations, procurement planning and coordination among implementing agencies. The World Bank, through its guidance on public investment management and infrastructure preparation, consistently emphasises that rigorous front-end preparation is one of the strongest predictors of projects being delivered on time, within budget and capable of achieving their intended development outcomes. And guess what – it shortens the procurement process!

The best-managed projects are often the least noticed. They proceed quietly because ministries communicate with one another. Utility companies coordinate their activities. Risks are identified before construction begins rather than after contracts have been signed. Roads are excavated once instead of three times. Contractors mobilise once instead of repeatedly. Taxpayers pay once instead of repeatedly financing avoidable mistakes.

There is no ribbon-cutting ceremony for a risk register that prevented a cost overrun. No newspaper headline celebrates a coordination meeting that saved taxpayers fifty million dollars. Success in public investment management often appears remarkably ordinary because its greatest achievements are the expensive problems that never occur.

Perhaps that is why Miss Tiny deserves a permanent seat at every project planning meeting—not literally, of course, but symbolically. Before approving another project variation, extending another contract or excavating another newly paved road, someone should quietly ask the question that guided so many discussions during this author’s years at PIMSEC.

“How does this affect Miss Tiny?”

Not because she understands engineering drawings or discounted cash flow analysis.

Not because she studies procurement legislation or project appraisal manuals.

But because she pays for every inefficient decision regardless.

Every unnecessary delay.

Every avoidable cost overrun.

Every poorly coordinated project.

Every public dollar that fails to deliver its maximum value ultimately belongs to citizens like Miss Tiny, whose sacrifices rarely appear in Cabinet submissions but whose lives are shaped by every decision they contain.

That is the real measure of successful public investment management. Not whether another ribbon is cut, nor whether another impressive project appears in a glossy annual report, but whether somewhere in Tavares Gardens, Miss Tiny walks into her neighbourhood wholesale with her usual food basket, smiles quietly to herself, and realises that this week she can finally afford to place one small tin of condensed milk on the counter.

That little luxury will never appear in a project completion report or an economic appraisal. Yet it may be the clearest evidence of all that government has truly delivered what every public investment should ultimately strive to achieve—genuine value for money for the people it exists to serve.

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Douglas Martin Levermore, MBA, JP, is an independent management consultant and the founding Executive Director of Jamaica’s Public Investment Management Secretariat (PIMSEC)—the government unit established to strengthen project appraisal, fiscal discipline, and oversight of public investment, now known as the Public Investment Appraisal Branch (PIAB) within the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service. He also serves as a FINRA arbitrator and a commissioned Notary Public in the Commonwealth of Virginia. He is available for select international consulting, advisory, keynote speaking, and project-based engagements and may be contacted at [email protected]. These reflections are written with the generous gift of a stranger whose kindness gave him more time—a tribute to the organ donor whose legacy lives on through every word.