Case Studies/Project Profiles: Uganda
District Development in Uganda:
The Formulation Process for a Pilot Project
by Doug Porter, UNCDF Regional Technical Advisor
Contents
Introduction
Step One: Local Council & Community Profiling
and Capacity Assessment
Step Two: Definition of Planning, Allocation, and
Management Systems
Step Three: Arrangements for Pilot Implementation,
Management and Monitoring
Creating a Communication Strategy
Seeking Out Quiet Voices
Conclusion
The
District Development Project (DDP), now underway in Uganda, is contributing
to national policies and procedures for the planning, allocation and
management of decentralized services. UNCDF’s support is focussed on
five districts, Mukono, Jinja, Arua, Kotido and Kabale. Experience gained
over the next 3-4 years will help define how development funds will
be made available to all local governments in Uganda. Through this pilot
project, UNCDF, together with UNDP (and in close collaboration with
the World Bank and other donor agencies) is addressing the policy, capacity
and fiscal constraints to decentralized poverty alleviation.
The formulation of the DDP involved extensive consultation at all levels of local government and a wide variety of other stakeholders including central government, donors, NGOs, private contractors and service providers, as well as community groups. The process was intended to build a sense of ownership and better appreciation of different stakeholder interests. This approach was unconventional. It sought to create an atmosphere of exchange among all stakeholders who together would design the project, rather than relying on technical judgements made by external agents.
During the formulation process, UNCDF and the Ministry of Local Government (MOLG) focussed on three main objectives:
Capacity Building
To support capacity building with the MOLG and technical staff of selected districts and sub-counties, the two main levels of local government in Uganda. This was regarded as essential to the local control of subsequent implementation of the Pilot.
Participation
To provide for wide-ranging participation by local governments, and community interests in determining the main features of the Pilot. Participation during the formulation was intended to increase the legitimacy of the Pilot, the appropriateness of the design, and local ownership and institutional integration.
Appropriate Design
To ensure that the Pilot is designed according to the needs and capacities of the stakeholders, open for modification through experience, rather than as a blueprint for implementation.
To achieve these
main objectives, the formulation process for the DDP-Pilot was divided
into three steps: 1) Local Council & Community Profiling and Capacity
Assessment; 2) Definition of Planning, Allocation, and Management Systems;
and 3) Arrangements for Pilot Implementation, Management, and Monitoring.
(return)
Step One: Local Council & Community Profiling and Capacity Assessment
The first step involved talking with Local Councils and community members about how they plan to create and manage services like schools, water systems, clinics and local roads. This helped to identify strengths and weaknesses of existing practices and clarify the main issues that the DDP Pilot would have to take into account during the design process.
For instance, during
Step One it became obvious that communities and local governments planned
and delivered services in many different ways. It became evident that
investments often did not bring good returns. Design choices were poorly
made, important social concerns were often excluded, poor tendering
and contract management practices resulted in substandard construction.
These experiences made it especially important to get a clear understanding
of how services were planned and provided. Schools and health clinics,
for instance, were created under quite different procedures. Contractors
often had quite different ideas than members of the District Tender
Board. The Heads of District Technical Departments often had different
views about who should be responsible for designing and overseeing the
construction process. These things could change in the future based
on the lessons and recommendations coming from the DDP-Pilot. Inventive
local approaches to solving these problems were also discovered. This
reinforced the need to reject a single common local planning procedure
and pushed project designers to ensure that a range of options were
built into the DDP Pilot. (return)
Step
Two: Definition of Planning, Allocation, and Management Systems
This step included consultations with the Local Councils, NOGs, contractors and consumers of services, to define five main design options:
1. Menu of Investment Options: What kinds of services and what aspects of services could be financed?
2. Funding Allocations and Channels: What conditions should apply to accessing the funds, how would funds be channeled to local governments and community organisations to support service delivery?
3. Financing Terms: What level of co-financing should be required, from local governments, from service users?
4. Planning and Provision Responsibilities: Who should be involved in each stage of planning and allocating funds to services, what should be their roles and relationships?
5. Micro-project Implementation Arrangements: What were the best arrangements for involving government, local contractors, community organisations, consumers in implementing investment projects and ensuring their long term sustainability?
This second step
also involved consultations with Local Councils and community members
to define the DDP-Pilot's planning, allocation, and management systems.
Step One made it clear that communities and Local Councils were already
planning for and managing investments in infrastructure and basic services
in many, quite diverse ways. It also became apparent that there were
complex issues that needed to be discussed further and that would require
a different way of communicating.
The participants
were at first quite skeptical about the value of the methods and materials—partly
because they were not familiar with how to use them and partly because
they felt that using these materials were more trouble than they were
worth. After the district and community consultants used the materials,
both in practice and in the field, they came to realize that the interactive
methods and materials greatly improved the consultation process.
Given the number of different interests and opinions, UNCDF, the MoLG and local governments, all jointly responsible for the design, had to make trade-offs and compromises about the design. Legal constraints sometimes dictated design choices, in other cases, the strongly held views of local councilors had to be set aside in favour of advice from the community about what should occur. As far as possible, it was agreed that project design should follow the existing rules and regulations, so as to test the extent to which a participatory planning process could occur within the framework of decentralised local governance. It will be important that the decisions made about the design options be reviewed and evaluated by all stakeholders during implementation.
The consultations were designed to be interactive and used participatory materials and methods to create an atmosphere for exchange. The consultations with various groups in the district were based on questions and proposals concerning the main project design parameters. It was not a consensus-building process where everyone came together in agreement, there are too many divergent interests and motivations to get complete consensus. People's opinions and suggestions about issues were sought, acknowledged, and to the extent possible, incorporated into the development of the Pilot.
The
consultation process was unusual in many aspects and took many people
by surprise. Some did not understand the need for a lengthy, expensive
consultation process, especially when the effectiveness of the process
can only be proven by how well the project design is able to adapt to
changing conditions and lessons gained during implementation over the
next 3 to 4 years.
For others, the process was their first chance to voice their opinions about government projects in a public forum. This is echoed in an elder's words from Kabale district, "We've never had government people come and ask us about our problems and ideas. " (return)
Step Three: Arrangements for Pilot Implementation, Management and Monitoring
Step Three focused on preparing the Project Document and sharing translated versions of drafts with the Local Councils, Central Government, and community members to ensure that the Project design was sound. There were three major questions that had to be decided at this stage:
- How will the funds from UNCDF be channelled to the Local Councils and Communities?
- What kinds of training and other support will be needed to help implement the project?
- What are the best ways for the results of the Pilot to be monitored and recorded so that the lessons learned can be taken into account when the Pilot is expanded to other districts in Uganda?
It was extremely important to make sure that the technical aspects of the Project were accurate and workable and that people in the districts continue to receive information about the progress of the Project.
The quality of the project design has greatly improved due to the formulation process. The improvements are seen in the increased understanding about the actual conditions in the Pilot districts, the existing planning and allocation systems, and different roles and responsibilities of government, non-government, and private actors. There is also a better awareness of the political implications of "technical" decisions which will need to be closely monitored during the implementation of the project. (return)
Creating a Communication Strategy
When
UNCDF and the MOLG decided to spearhead this experimental, highly-consultative
process, they realized they needed a communication strategy which reflected
their commitment to a two-way communication process. The Communication
Framework consisted of methods and materials which assisted Project
facilitators to gather people's views and ideas and incorporate them
into the project design. In addition, this approach provided a framework
for documenting, analyzing and evaluating the progress and impact of
the Pilot. To accomplish this, different tools and techniques were required
that would encourage both dialogue and analysis by the consultants and
the participants.
Since
it is time-consuming, labour-intensive, and frequently costly to develop
communication materials, they are generally forgotten or done in hindsight
more as a method of promoting the project rather than seeing it as integral
to the shaping the project. Even where projects are highly participatory,
development facilitators often feel more comfortable with group or individual
discussion than using more interactive forms of communication (tools
such as pre-developed materials, PRA techniques, etc.).
There are inherent dangers in this thinking. It is not uncommon to find facilitators completely dominating the conversation because they get caught up in the dialogue and forget the role of letting others speak and express their views and ideas. Interactive tools such as large illustrations or drama can help reduce this tendency because the attention is focused on the participants interpretation and explanation of the tools.
The
methods and materials created and developed during formulation of the
DDP were more than simply translating project information into local
languages and pictures. It required matching the stakeholders' information
needs with appropriate methods and materials that would support information
exchange at all levels. The methods and materials were developed in
Uganda and field-tested with community members, local government councilors,
and other stakeholders before they were used in the consultations.
The DDP begins by recognizing that people everywhere are capable of planning and organizing for the many basic services they need in common. In Uganda, local communities and their representatives have always played the leading role in mobilizing the resources for schools and clinics, access roads and water supplies in ways that suit local circumstances and priorities.
Although most communities have some of the resources needed, the quality and accessibility of these services could be improved if they had additional development funds, and more influence over the ways these are allocated and investments planned and managed. This is the reason that the DDP Pilot is Investing in People. It aims to provide resources so that local councils and communities can improve their capacity to make their priorities and organize for the delivery of sustainable services which meet the needs of all members of the community.
A District Advisory
Group (DAG) was created to guide the formulation process. The DAG met
several times to review the progress and proposed activities. During
the first meeting of the DAG in March 1997, the DAG members reviewed
the Step One final reports. Also, they discussed the timing and preparations
for Step Two activities including a survey of the communication materials
to be used during the consultations.
Despite
a concerted effort to consult with groups that should be and will be
affected by the project, a question remains about how much the voices
of marginalized and poor community members influenced project design.
Special care was taken to seek out and meet with the many different groups found in communities in order to include their diverging viewpoints, conflicts, similarities, agreements and so on. But it is not completely clear, yet, how representative they were of those silent groups whose -voices are generally not taken into consideration when designing programs such as the DDP-Pilot.
For example, though the Government of Uganda has made real efforts to encourage the involvement of women in politics, there are still very few women elected as councilors and few women hold positions of power within Councils. (return)
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"Those who talk about community fatigue are the same ones who are used to getting handouts. When the handouts fail to come, they begin imagining that communities are fatigued. In other instances, the reluctance of communities to participate in projects in which they have not been involved (in developing) is also wrongly branded 'participation fatigue'" - Key informant, Jinja District, January 1997
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Given
the interest and attention focused on stakeholder involvement in the
design and development of the DDP Pilot, a unique formulation process
was created to guarantee stakeholder involvement in all aspects. This
process was unique in two ways: the level of commitment by both the
UNCDF and the MOLG to a slower, more intensive formulation process;
and the level of stakeholder involvement in the definition of the Project.
Although the formulation process has concluded, there is value in reflecting
on the process and what has been accomplished.
As this is a Pilot project, it is intended to serve as a learning experience for not only the Government of Uganda and the UN Capital Development Fund but for other governmental and non-governmental agencies as well. Although much has been learned, there are still questions that remain to be answered during the implementation:
1. As the Project is committed to working within the Local Council system, how will it continue to deal with issues such as lack of trust between different levels of local government and the limited legitimacy of local government in the eyes of community members?
2. The formulation process was not a consensus-building process but a consultation and compromise process. It raises the question about how much consultation and participation is effective? Who wants to and should participate when and how during the implementation process?
3. Related to the
previous question, how does the Project ensure that people frequently
marginalized in the design and implementation decision-making processes
(such as the poor, the disabled, and women) are able to assert their
rights to become activelyinvolved?
