Principles of Scaling Up CDD

Ensuring Minimum Conditions:  A multi-sector CDD program cannot successfully scale up unless the country meets a certain number of pre-conditions. These include: strong political commitment to local empowerment and decentralization; a well-designed decentralization program geared towards local empowerment; one or several successful and cost-effective community and local government projects; and government and donor willingness to work towards unified disbursement mechanisms. It is therefore important that these elements are already in place or are being put in place at the start of the program.

Other key principles of scaling up CDD programs are:

Cost effectiveness and fiscal sustainability: Experience shows that this is best achieved by using and further developing existing local institutions, capacities, and people for program management and training; avoiding intermediaries; transferring resources directly to each of the implementing agents and levels; and relying on and/or developing community-level technical support, such as community health, veterinary or agricultural workers.

Co-production of services and infrastructure by different actors and levels: Scaling up CDD implies the co-production of investments, outputs and services by different stakeholders at different levels. Incompatible incentives, differences in values and experience, and the unclear assignment of functions to different co-producers often pose difficulties and impede the development process. Overcoming co-production problems requires (a) fostering a common culture and vision among stakeholders; (b) assigning and describing all program functions unambiguously to different participants based on the principle of subsidiarity; and (c) providing incentives compatible with program objectives.

Equal access to information, participation, and democratic decision-making: Scaling up requires careful attention to the information gathering and decision making processes at the community and local level, and beyond, and should include a well-designed communications program which can constantly keep all levels and stakeholders informed. Information, education, and communication (IEC) activities should meet awareness and learning needs, as well as process monitoring needs.