Page 69

CGH13_ebook

E f f e c t i v e a n d a c c o u n t a b l e s e r v i c e d e l i v e r y constructive Community Integrity Building approach we can help to generate new fixes for what are often well-known and seemingly intractable problems. We facilitate a locally driven dynamic that helps to identify viable solutions to improve the quality of public infrastructure and services. The by-product of this work is often a reduction in fraud, corruption, waste and mismanagement. Without investing any funds directly in bricks, mortar, gravel, pipes or wells, how can communities get better school buildings, roads or access to water in settings where maladministration, incompetence, corruption or fraud are widespread? The Community Integrity Building work we have undertaken in six countries was implemented with NGO partners and public institutions.3 The results so far Table 1 contains a summary of the fix-rate for Community Integrity Building supported by Integrity Action in six countries over a two-year period (2011–12). Through our approach and our work with partners on the ground the rate at which problems in projects are fixed has reached over 83 per cent in Afghanistan and over 50 per cent elsewhere. Problems identified in government services are being fixed at a rate of 25 to 33 per cent. Afghanistan stands out as the most remarkable case, both because of the high fix-rate and the number of projects they worked on. One can distinguish between project-level fixes and sub-fixes within a project. If a single water point is repaired or a kitchen in a clinic is installed those are important steps in the right direction and will likely be experienced as empowering, but they fall short of a project-level fix. The table below only reports on project level fixes. The fix-rate findings for these six countries represent a possible step-change for transparency and accountability work for four main reasons: 1. The high fix-rate being achieved in some settings for projects and services positively affects the lives of thousands of people 2. The outstanding work led by Integrity Watch Afghanistan shows that the work can be scaled up. Integrity Watch Afghanistan has achieved a ratio between monitors and projects of 3:1, which is an extremely efficient and effective deployment and engagement with community monitors 3. The work is being implemented in countries where violence and intimidations through muscle power are frequently used. No local monitors or NGO staff partners have been killed 4. The work is extremely cost-effective, costing on average less than one per cent of the value of the projects being monitored and improved, especially when it starts being scaled up as it has been in Afghanistan, Palestine and Timor Leste How is the fix-rate calculated? The fix-rate is the incidence with which transparency and accountability related problems are resolved to the satisfaction of key stakeholders – in short, the percentage of resolved problems. What constitutes a fix needs to be defined and identified by people who have a stake in its outcome, even when it is a policy or system-level fix. A fixrate can be phrased as a meaningful percentage. A one-off or singular solution – like the establishment of a sovereign wealth fund – would not, therefore, be counted as a fix. If local communities try to improve the quality of governance in basic health care services in 16 localities and they experience an improvement that generally satisfies them in four locations, this would represent a fix-rate of 25 per cent. If citizens file complaints using right to information legislation and receive satisfactory responses in fifty per cent of the cases, that would be the fix-rate. Inputs, like the formation of a joint working group, or passage of open contracting legislation may be solutions to a procedural or legal problem, but they would not be measured as fixes by this definition. Table 1 shows a clear frontrunner among Integrity Action’s partners: Integrity Watch Afghanistan (IWA), the leading Afghan NGO in its sector. IWA achieves a consistently high Table 1: Community Integrity Building by Integrity Action (2011–12) in six countries Commonwealth Governance Handbook 2013/14 68 Period: 2011–12 Afghanistan Kenya Kyrgyzstan Nepal Palestine Timor Total Leste Number of monitored infrastructure projects 281 - - 8 - 15 304 Per cent fix-rate 83% - 100% - 55% 79% Est. value of monitored projects in USD $247m4 - - $26k - $2.27m ca.$249.25m Number of monitored public services - 16 12 - 8 - 36 Percent Fix-Rate - 25% 33% - 25% - 28% Total number of monitors5 845 393 494 57 6036 181 2,573


CGH13_ebook
To see the actual publication please follow the link above