Workshop: Demanding Good Governance – Inside and Out

Demanding Good Governance – Inside and Out
Improving service delivery requires improved governance: stronger incentives to providers and improved accountability mechanisms.  One way of doing this is through the creation of so-called agency, which typically involves improving citizens access to information and creating opportunities for them to use that information to influence actions by governments and service providers.

The World Bank Human Development Network’s Office of the Chief Economist and the Result for Development Institute’s Transparency and Accountability Program (TAP) have established a partnership to support the capacity of civil society organizations to monitor and evaluate government programs in the human development sectors.  During its first year, the partnership focused its efforts in the training of 20 organizations in 12 countries to conduct public expenditure tracking surveys and absenteeism studies.

Throughout a four-day peer-review workshop with these organizations, we sought to take stock of innovations to promote “agency” within human development projects and programs, both inside and outside of the World Bank.  In a half-day seminar on March 25, “Demanding Good Governance – Inside and Out”, six teams of Bank staff and civil society organizations presented their experiences: this piece will take a closer look at two of those cases.  The agenda and presentations are available at HDN Chief Economist website

Access to Information
Timely, relevant and credible information is paramount to good governance. Providing information to citizens so that they can influence policy makers and services providers is one way of improving governance in the HD sectors. To highlight the creation of agency through information provision, we invited presentations from three Bank teams working on projects focusing on the role information provision plays in improving service delivery.

One case study of a rigorous impact evaluation presented during the seminar offered new evidence on the impact of information on school management in Madagascar. Though Madagascar showed progress in education through improved completion rates, evidence of weak sector performance (high repetition rates, low test scores, and high rates of teacher absenteeism) remained. Through information dissemination, stakeholders were informed about standards  of what is expected from a “good school”. Additionally, report cards and school meetings were used to focus attention on education outcomes. The results of the impact evaluation indicate that the program succeeded in changing the behavior of all the actors (both service providers and users) towards better management, but also stresses that changes like this take time. This study provides encouraging evidence that information provision can provide citizens with the ability to promote positive change in service quality.

Information on the case studies from Peru and the Philippines are available online

Citizen Monitoring of Service Delivery
Civil society organizations, including the three TAP-supported organizations that presented during the seminar, are using innovative approaches and analytical methods to keep service providers and policy makers accountable on the ground by monitoring service delivery indicators.

One example highlighted during the seminar came from the Coalition for Health Promotion and Social Development (HEPS), a Ugandan NGO. HEPS is part of the “Stop Stock-outs Campaign”, an effort that was started in response to evidence pointing to less than half of Ugandan public health facilities having necessary medications, with average stock-outs lasting 2.5 months.  HEPS works with citizens to monitor pharmaceutical stock-out levels across the country – individuals use SMS technology to report stock-out rates to HEPS, who then aggregates the information into interactive maps and uses them as tools to inform policy makers and service providers of medicine shortages across the country. By combining citizen monitoring with a comprehensive information campaign this CSO has succeeded in getting the attention of the highest levels of government – including the President.  Currently, HEPS is working with the World Bank and TAP to strengthen its analytical capacity, and recently completed a public expenditure tracking survey also in the pharmaceutical sector – that report is forthcoming.

Information on the case studies in Guatemala and India are available online

Next Steps
The two examples we have chosen to highlight here provide insights into how provision of information to users of services and the engagement of citizens in monitoring can be used as part of efforts to improve the governance of service delivery.  The cases discussed during the seminar are examples of how we can build “demand-side” approaches to governance within Bank-supported programs. Exchanges with civil society organizations engaged in this type of work can provide fruitful opportunities for learning and collaboration.