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Using Community Feedback to Enhance Accountability
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The ongoing third Malawi Social Action Fund project uses community scorecards to allow citizens to assess the performance of local public services and agencies and thereby foster better quality, efficiency, and accountability. Using participatory techniques, more than 500 communities throughout Malawi have scored local agencies' performance on their management processes and the performance of project outputs such as water points and classroom blocks. At the same time, the agencies also do a self-assessment. The community and the agency then meet to agree on a joint action plan for reform or performance improvement.
The first round of scores was less than satisfactory. Communities complained about lack of transparency. They suggested that local authorities need to allow communities to participate more fully. In order to curb the problem of "ghost workers," they recommended that local project committees verify that the number of people receiving wages equals the number who actually worked.
While not yet independently assessed, the scorecard process appears to be making communities aware of their role in the management of sub-projects and local authorities seem to be becoming more responsive to citizen complaints. The project is now working with local authorities and partners to adopt the process as a regular part of local government.
The Kecamatan Development Project in Indonesia included an innovative strategy to attack Indonesia's deeply ingrained corruption. One part of the strategy provides for systematic procedures for local authorities to follow up instances of corruption reported by villagers, including through a "complaints box." In many such cases, inferior work was rectified and in a few cases funds were returned or (rarely) officials removed from office. Such sanctions are almost always the result of villager appeals to higher-level officials. Complaints through the police and judicial channels have proved of little use; the police can be bribed and the judicial system is not able to act on complaints against officials. The positive effects of improved community-based enforcement may, however, not have succeeded in reducing the overall level of corruption. A recent impact evaluation found that increasing grass-roots participation in monitoring village-level KDP interventions altered the method of possible corruption but had relatively limited effects on the overall level of possible corruption.
Source: Staff reports and IEG 2006o.
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