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Measuring and strengthening local governance capacity: the local governance barometer
20 March 2007
Evan Bloom, Amy Sunseri, Aaron Leonard
Private Agencies Collaborating Together (PACT)

Those working to achieve the Millennium Development goals increasingly recognize good governance as a fundamental requirement for reducing poverty and achieving sustainable human development. With decentralization and devolution efforts on the rise in many countries, the ability of local officials to adequately manage their governments and meet the needs of their constituents is essential. However, many local governments lack the experience and capacity to carry out their increased responsibilities and to respond to citizen expectations and demands.

As governments, institutions, and donors continue to search for successful models of decentralized governance, the lack of relevant tools and strategies to analyze local governance effectiveness becomes evermore apparent. Local governance cannot be measured simply through quantifiable indicators, but must include the perceptions of the citizens and the government, and the relationships all actors have with each another. The process of building the capacity for good local governance is equally complex, since it involves a cross-section of actors that includes the government itself, the private sector, and civil society at large.

The Local Governance Barometer
In response to these challenges, Pact joined forces with its Impact Alliance partners, SNV and IDASA, to develop the Local Governance Barometer (LGB), with an aim of achieving the following objectives:

Ensure the participation of principal actors during the design of governance models as well as the collection, processing, and analysis of the information collected
Arrive at quantitative measures for good governance indicators to enable a comparative analysis between different situations, an understanding of the evolution of factors of governance, and evaluate the impact of interventions

Since early 2006, the Local Governance Barometer has been in its Piloting and Testing Phase. Over the last year, SNV, Pact, and IDASA have undertaken fifteen pilots in six countries including South Africa, Botswana, Cameroon, Ecuador, Ghana, and Tanzania.

"Good Governance" from an Informed, Participatory Local Perspective
Many local governance models are top down, expert driven, best practice checklists. In contrast, the LGB puts a premium on locally defined criteria and participatory processes for assessing local governance. This promotes ownership of the results as well as consensus in taking steps forward from a multi-stakeholder perspective and not solely from the local government’s point of view and responsibilities.

While the process is locally driven, it is informed by regional, national and international best practices that have successfully addressed governance in themes such as participation, equity, rule of law, effectiveness and accountability. Through the LGB, local governments help coordinate stakeholders to assume collaborative roles in addressing governance issues. Citizens, government employees and elected officials help define what is meant by good governance and monitor progress across a broad range of critical success factors.

Findings and Initial Results
In February 2007, the LGB's Core Development Team met in Nairobi to discuss key findings from the 15 pilots and how they can be used to improve the Local Government Barometer. The findings included:

The assessment process must allow users to model mission-critical behaviors and processes, such as data-based decision-making, open dialogue, respectful listening, nonhierarchical communication, transparency, and participatory planning.
Capacity assessment processes should be designed to yield easy-to-use, helpful information that informs decision-making around mission-critical issues.
The integrity of an assessment process is closely linked to the characteristics of the environment in which that process unfolds.
Develop assessment techniques that provide for the generation of data that is both prescriptive and descriptive.
Use assessment techniques that build trust, cohesion and a shared sense of purpose.
Use assessment techniques that foster diverse perspectives.
A process that integrates assessment with other aspects of organizational transformation will be most powerful if it helps users identify standards that are change drivers.
Financial sustainability and program replication are closely interconnected. High implementation costs and levels of complexity slow the potential for broad adoption of new practices.

The LGB initiative has generated over $500,000 in donor support since its launch 18 months ago. During the six-country pilot effort, groups have found the process deeply empowering and, although it is much too soon to definitively assess impacts, initial results indicate that our original impact predictions are being proven true, including:

Enhanced functionality and responsiveness of democratic local government through the application of lessons learned, including addressing gaps in service delivery and applying new knowledge in policy making. It has also encouraged rival government actors to collaborate around new, shared goals such as improving citizen participation in local government;
Development of strategies, programs, and practices that seek to increase citizen participation and empower participant citizens—specifically to increase the direct and indirect participation and empowerment of women and other formerly disenfranchised groups in local government decision-making; and
Provision of technical assistance and training to support planning and implementation of local economic development strategies

Additionally, the process has helped participating Civil Society groups and citizens to identify advocacy and lobbying issues and develop strategies to address them.

Future of the LGB
As the pilot phase of the Local Governance Barometer winds down, the LGB's Core Development Team is working to apply lessons learned and to engage in dialogue around methodological refinements. The Pact Capacity Building Services Group (CBSG) is currently experimenting with reporting templates that yield easy-to-use, helpful information for decisionmaking around mission-critical issues. Additionally, many exciting opportunities for scale-up of the LGB lay on the horizon. These include expanding the LGB to Malawi this year, adapting the LGB to create sector-specific applications to measure local governance for Disaster Risk Reduction, and developing an online portal to facilitate virtual data entry and processing.

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