Delivering the Goods Building Local Government Capacity to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals A Practitioner's Guide from UNCDF Experience in Least Developed Countries October 2005 Foreword | Introduction | Leave Feedback Download pdf version of entire book (3.16 mg)

Introduction

The rationale for developing this Practitioner’s Guide derives from a number of considerations.

Basic Local Public Investments and the Need for ‘Scaleable’ Delivery Models

Firstly, there is now general agreement that a key part of any strategy for poverty reduction and for achievement of the Millennium Development Goals lies in improved delivery of basic public infrastructure and related services. This point has been forcefully made in “Investing in Development”[1], which calls for a major increase in funding for public investments, for poor people and in poor areas – and also calls for the rapid deployment of locally appropriate and replicable delivery systems to ensure effective absorption of funds for delivery of this infrastructure on the scale required. The Millennium Project report also endorses the now widely-held view that much of this basic infrastructure is most appropriately delivered locally, through decentralized financing, planning and delivery systems, and that local government bodies should play a key role in this.

The challenge is then to devise or to reform local infrastructure systems, to ensure that resources allocated for local public expenditure on pro-poor investments are used effectively, efficiently, equitably and accountably; this is the more urgent insofar as there are, sadly, good reasons to predict that the resources allocated by governments and development partners for pro-poor investments will fall short of the target levels, and hence, more than ever, those resources which are forthcoming need to be used to greatest possible effect.

The Knowledge Gap

Secondly, however, there is surprisingly little useful, codified knowledge relevant to this major challenge. There is much normative literature which prescribes the need for greater decentralization and subsidiarity, and which advocates the virtues of greater public participation in local government affairs and of more effective local accountability. But there is surprisingly little literature providing guidance as to how such principles are to be translated into practice within the institutional realities of specific national decentralization frameworks and local government systems, and within the current operating procedures and the other constraints of real life in poor areas.

There is indeed a growing body of frequently-cited good practice in local infrastructure and service delivery: the innovative experiments in participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre and elsewhere in Brazil, the citizen scorecards for service delivery monitoring in Bangalore, private-public partnerships in very many countries, etc. But almost invariably these innovative and important practices are developed in urban settings.

The greatest MDG “deficits” still lie in rural Asia and rural Africa where, by far, most poor people still live, despite the rapid urbanization of the past decades. Yet the challenges for improving infrastructure and service delivery in these rural areas, by rural local governments, are in many ways qualitatively very different and frequently far more daunting than those in urban areas. Recipes which work for improving big city infrastructure delivery are often quite inappropriate when applied at the rural Commune level.

There is then an important “knowledge gap” facing policy-makers and practitioners who are intent on promoting improved local infrastructure and service delivery, in a sustainable and replicable manner, in those areas where these improvements are most needed.

UNCDF’s Local Development Experience

This Guide, based on operational experience, is intended as a modest contribution to addressing this gap. Over the past decade UNCDF has built up a portfolio of Local Development Programmes[2] (LDPs) in the Least Developed Countries, primarily in Africa and Asia. Although these LDPs operate in very different national contexts – and are tailored accordingly – they all embody a common strategy. They aim to promote more effective, efficient, equitable and accountable infrastructure and service delivery through rural local governments, by twinning innovations in funding mechanisms with other “capacity development” innovations in planning, budgeting, delivery and accountability arrangements. These innovations are piloted through reforms designed as far as possible “within” the current institutional framework (rather than being designed ex novo, according to some ideal model), and so can be used as a basis for promoting wider national policy change and replication – in other words the emphasis is precisely on promoting the sorts of “scaleable” local delivery systems advocated by the Millennium Project.

The experience is also credible. In a relatively short period of time the very modest investments in this LDP portfolio have yielded substantial dividends, contributing to reform of decentralization policy and of local delivery systems in many of the LDCs where UNCDF has been active, and which have been documented in a number of independent evaluations. The LDP approach has indeed been singled out for praise as the “only” successful sustainable and replicable approach by the recent OECD DAC Review of Donor Support to Decentralization[3].

The Role of the Guide

This Guide leverages UNCDF’s experience, and presents a mix of guidelines, lessons and anecdotes (positive and not so positive) derived from practice. It aims to inform practitioners on the front line, charged with designing, implementing or supporting programmes aimed at promoting local development, building local government capacities, and devising decentralized infrastructure delivery models which have some chance of replication outside the “project confines”.

It should be stressed that this Guide does not pretend to be a prescriptive “cookbook” – it rather aims to provide a framework of the issues which typically arise in such programmes, and to give a sense of the considerations, trade-offs, risks and nuances to take into account.

UNCDF intends to make regular updates and revisions of this Guide, as further lessons are learned and its LDP experiences deepen – for this, regular feedback from users and practitioners is essential. To this end, a space for reader feedback, critique and comment will be provided on the UNCDF website.

Overview of the Guide

Chapter 1: Local Development Programme Strategy

This chapter presents the origins and logic of the LDP approach; it then articulates the various context considerations which go into determining the policy-reform and institutional strategy of an LDP; it outlines the options for deciding on the geographic focus; and it sets out the determinants of the poverty-reduction strategy. It closes with an Annex which provides a more detailed methodology for appraising the national and local institutional context of decentralization and local government.

Chapter 2: Financing Strategy

This chapter provides a framework for thinking about local government funding, within the broader context of centre-local funding, and within this it situates the LDP as a strategy for piloting unconditional block grant transfers. It proceeds to detail the various factors which should determine both the absolute levels of funding; the mechanism for allocating funds to individual local governments; and the rationale for allocating funds to lower-level bodies in rural areas. It then introduces the notion of performance-based funding to local governments, a particularly promising LDP innovation, and the conditions for this. The Chapter then addresses strategy issues in regard to local resource mobilization and “matching” contributions, and the dangers often inherent in the conventional approaches, and finally covers management and control of funds; a postscript deals with some of the more specific issues faced in (“Francophone”) single treasury systems.

Chapter 3: Local Public Expenditure Management: Planning & Budgeting, Implementation, and Operations & Maintenance

Chapter 3 is presented in four sections:

Part I provides the broader context of local planning within a PEM framework, and the importance and problems of promoting participation in this.

Part II situates the LDP planning support strategy within this broader context, and articulates a framework for addressing local government planning and budgeting. Special attention is paid to the often-neglected institutional dimension of the local planning and budgeting process, and to the areas where “institutional innovations” are needed and have been introduced. This is followed by a treatment of the annual planning process and its tie-in to the budgeting cycle, a break out of the key steps in this cycle, and then by a highlighting of some typical problems faced at each step, and illustration of some of the tools which LDPs have trialed to facilitate these steps to ensure consistency and transparency.

Part III then addresses issues in implementing plans and actually producing the infrastructure – again an area often neglected. It presents a framework for looking at implementation options, by detailing the various tasks to be undertaken and the roles to be played, by illustrating both the scope and the limits of involving the private sector and community groups; throughout, the typical difficulties encountered in poor rural areas are highlighted. A postscript provides a reminder of the points in this phase where corruption is possible.

Part IX looks at the issues in asset management or long term operation and maintenance of these investments. This again provides a framework for looking at O&M options – and for determining where and for what types of infrastructure community O&M is feasible and where, conversely, it is not and where this task must be left to government.

Chapter 4: Accountability, Communications & Information

This chapter outlines the various ways in which mechanisms for accountability can be promoted, to ensure that local PEM and infrastructure delivery is effective, efficient and equitable. It first deals with practical issues surrounding the physical availability of information in the rural local government setting. It then addresses the “downward” accountability challenge: first, by examining how local government-citizen accountability issues can vary by institutional context; and then by setting out the different ways by which information can be made more available to the public. It similarly addresses the challenge of ensuring “horizontal” accountability of the local executive branches to the local council, and how this too varies by context, and indicates some ways this relationship can be strengthened. In closing, it looks at issues in the accountability of local to central government.

Chapter 5: Capacity Building

This final chapter addresses more squarely the theme of CB. It begins with a framework to help identify the possible constraints on LG performance which require remedial action, and a reminder that very often the key underlying problem is the inadequacy of the systems, procedures and incentives within which people have to work – and that the thrust of the innovations covered in Chapters II, III, and IV above is precisely to address these constraints. Where the problems are due to human resource constraints, the chapter spells out the types of remedy which may be possible, and highlights the typical skills which may need to be imparted, and some of the options for imparting them. LDP innovative experience in devising “demand-driven” CB mechanisms for LG personnel is also introduced. Finally, measures to address logistical constraints on performance are also covered. Throughout, this chapter seeks to remind the reader that CB is more akin to a performance art or a sport where skills can only be fully acquired by “doing,” and that the conventional dictum “no decentralization of responsibility until LG capacities are in place ..” makes little sense and should be reversed.