Social Accountability Capacity Building Program

Call for Citizens Voice about Delivery of Public Services

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIH) has a long-standing legal framework for decentralization.  More recently, new legislation for local self-government in entities was passed in 2004 and 2006 with the aim of increasing government responsiveness to citizens and improving public services. In spite of these frameworks, only 2% of citizens surveyed reported that decisions by local government reflected their priorities. In addition, the accountability of local government ranks last among all local governance indicators.

These were the findings of a recent Social Audit on Local Governance, disseminated at a workshop organized by the World Bank Institute. The workshop, held in Sarajevo in March 2007, introduced representatives of local and national governments, the donor community, and civil society to the results of the audit, which is a new diagnostic approach that focuses on the demand-side of local governance.

This workshop was part of an ongoing effort on Strengthening Local Governance and Service Delivery in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The World Bank Institute, the Bank’s ECA Region and the Austrian Government have supported the program to document local service delivery and accountability in BIH. The program and the recently completed audit seek to illuminate the environment for accountability and build capacity for social accountability mechanisms, ultimately to improve service delivery and responsiveness of local government.

On the demand-side (citizens’ voice and clients’ power), the program aims at capturing service users’ experiences with functions devolved to local government, as well as citizens’ perceptions of existing mechanisms to hold local governments accountable in Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the supply-side (local government and service providers), this initiative attempts to gather and analyze fiscal data across all 142 municipalities, review in depth fiscal and public financial management in 20 case municipalities, and assess the policy environment for service delivery and local governance.

One of the local officials prized the audit as revolutionary for BIH: “One-fourth of municipalities have been asking citizens about the quality of local administration, but not one inquires about citizens’ satisfaction with public services."

This intermediate report describes the Citizen Scorecard method, and the findings from the household and exit poll surveys.   The questionnaire was applied in 20 pre-selected municipalities to cover a vast range of local government typology, including regional differences, rural-urban characteristics, population size, and budget per capita.   A total of 1997 face-to-face interviews (1 respondent per household) were carried out in 343 settlements.

Some of the main findings of the audit are:

• Local roads and waste removal rank the highest among all services in terms of quality, with 93% and 94% respectively. Water supply was identified as the service with the lowest quality rate at only 57%.
• Access to health care is the highest compared to roads, water, waste, and sewage while the accessibility of the sewage network is the lowest (42%).
• Respondents were overwhelmingly disappointed with responsiveness of service providers to their complaints. Although the responsiveness of sewage service received the best rating, fewer than 25% of respondents who complained about a problem would rely on the service provider to fix it.
• Corruption in local government, however, has been low; 99% of respondents have never experienced corruption at local level.

The next phase of work will move beyond analysis to capacity building to improve the function of local government and services and empower citizens to hold them accountable.  Following the consultations with local government representatives, the next steps envisioned for WBI as part of its country-focus work in BIH include:

• Organizing trainings at the municipal level on strategic communications and social accountability methods (such as consultative citizens report cards);
• Conducting an institutional assessment of potential partner institutions in developing a leading training center on social accountability in the country;
• Building the capacity of local partner institutions to deliver training activities and technical assistance to municipalities on social accountability approaches; and
• Developing a core curriculum on local governance based on the needs identified by local officials, as well as a database and learning materials.

For more information on the workshop, please click here.

Story contributed by Mary McNeil and Sladjana Cosic (WBISD).