Balochistan Trial District Management Project

Transcription

1 Balochistan Trial District Management Project Table of Content 1. Application Application Description Application Purpose Stakeholders Impact: Costs and Benefits Evaluation: Failure or Success? Enablers/Critical Success Factors Constraints/Challenges Recommendations Contact... 5 Sources: (Author: Muhammed Usman Qazi (info@usmanqazi.com)) 1. Application The Government of Balochistan is working with the United Nations Development Program to assess how the delivery of public sector services in the province could be improved through enhanced capacity of all actors of the public sector delivery mechanism. For this purpose Balochistan Trial District Management Project (BTDMP) is being implemented as a pilot project in the districts of Jhal Magsi and Loralai. The principal objective of the Balochistan Trial District Management Project is to assess the types of institutional reforms and other changes that might be required for the decentralization of the delivery of public sector services and making them more effective. 1.1 Application Description The major component of the Project is to establish a user friendly district based participatory information system (PIS) for participatory planning, implementation, management and monitoring of local level public services with active participation of

2 beneficiary communities, formation of male and female community councils for active participation of target communities in planning and monitoring of public services, capacity building of local councils and line departments, and establishment of their linkages with the grassroots communities. The development objective of the project is to put in place institutional arrangements and mechanisms for effective delivery of public sector services based on decentralized and participatory local level development and test whether this approach is effective and resilient and can be replicated in other districts of the province. The PIS brings together data on distribution of public services with village- and household-level data. This data once processed and output can be used by local government decision makers to help plan, implement, manage and monitor public sector development activities at district level. The data collected from communities includes gender, educational level, occupation, vaccination, and access to schools, water, and health facilities. The GIS interface is used to present data not only to government officials, but also to communities with the intention of making them aware of community strengths, weaknesses and development potentials and priorities. The GIS itself also holds data layers on water courses, roads, settlements, forests, cultivation, power and communications infrastructure. Software used includes Oracle, Visual FoxPro, MS Office and Arc View. Hardware used includes 15 PCs, two global positioning systems, printers, a plotter, a digitiser, and an uninterruptible power supply. The project has following five major components: 1. Establishment of a GIS based Participatory Information System 2. Participatory Monitoring & Management Mechanisms 3. Participatory Planning & Implementation Mechanisms 4. Capacity Building of community organizations, Rural Development Academy and line departments 5. Policy, Institutional and Managerial Reforms So far, the project has introduced and tested its participatory mechanisms of information collection, participatory monitoring & management and participatory planning. These mechanisms have been tested in different union councils of the two districts in phased manner. At the district level District Management Information Centers have been established in the two districts, which provide household, village and union council level information. Information and status of public services working at the community level are also available in the DMICs.

3 At the grass roots, broad-based male and female community organizations are being formed. These organizations are called Community Councils. These community councils are taking active part in the improvement of their available facilities like schools, dispensaries, water supply schemes etc. Besides monitoring of their existing facilities, the community councils identify projects and prioritize them on the basis of their needs, which are available in the form of Community Development Plans. Once on board, the local councils will facilitate the community councils and will find ways and means to address the community issues. For the time being the Community Councils have been linked to different service providing organizations that include government line departments and different projects and programmes of public and private sectors. For human resource development the project is working with the Rural Development Academy, Quetta for introducing innovative training techniques and arranging training for community councils, local councils, staff of line departments and social organizations. In light of the lessons learnt, recommendations are submitted to the government on regular basis for undertaking necessary policy, institutional, and managerial reforms in order to make the whole development mechanism responsive to the needs of the people. 1.2 Application Purpose The information system was created to address the acute lack of even basic up-to-date data in Balochistan. The system's provision of data was intended to help identify gaps and disparities (spatial and gender) in service provision. It was also developed to draw communities into the planning process; creating a sense of ownership, a sense of consensus, and a sense of transparency in the district decision-making process; and creating a sense of the community's own development potential. The project has following three immediate objectives: a) Community Participation in local level development in order to have better monitoring of public sector services, planning and implementation of village level infrastructure and local resource mobilization for sustainable economic development. b) Institutional Capacity Building of rural local councils and line departments at district level for the management of local development activities. c) Provincial Policy Reform to strengthen the capabilities of local councils and line agencies in the implementation of sustainable decentralized participatory development in the province as a whole. 2. Stakeholders The four main stakeholders are: a) Project staff who has designed, implemented, and operated the information system

4 b) Government decision makers at district and provincial level who use the information from the system c) Community members, including village activists/social mobilisers who gather data from communities d) UNDP, the donor which has funded the project 3. Impact: Costs and Benefits The total direct costs for the initial three years of the project have been US$171,000: $45,000 on hardware and software; $110,000 on staff costs (IT staff and social mobilisers); and $16,000 on other costs (vehicles, stationery and communications). Following initial piloting in one sub-council in Loralai district, the PIS - and attendant District Management Information Centres - has been established across both the Loralai and Kacchi district in a number of sub-councils. In terms of preliminary impact, it can be claimed that 51 defunct public service facilities including primary schools, basic health units and potable water supply schemes have been made functional as a result of presentation of MIS data to district level authorities, using the GIS map. Various development schemes have been included in the annual development plan of each district, on the recommendations of the overall Project, based on the MIS-based needs assessment. The PIS has been declared the standard and has been recommended for replication across the Province. In the immediate future, Phase Two of the project aims to replicate the PIS in all sub-councils of Loralai and Kacchi districts. 4. Evaluation: Failure or Success? At present, the PIS can be evaluated as largely successful. Government staff is being trained to institutionalise the system, and so the sustainability of the system beyond Phase One of the donor project has yet to be tested. Reproducibility is also unclear because of the high project costs. 4.1 Enablers/Critical Success Factors 1. Donor funding 2. Community participation 3. Use of GIS to present data

5 4.2 Constraints/Challenges 1. Senior officials: Some objected to the high costs of the MIS; in part this may relate to the decision-making culture of district government, which has been based around informal, political information rather than the formal, rational information produced by the PIS. 2. Infrastructure: Lack of IT skills and lack of IT access (particularly in villages) have constrained the project. 3. Future sustainability: There are three key sustainability issues for this project. First, the extent to which a more rational, objective culture of decision making can be institutionalised in government. Second, and related, the disjuncture between the low-level staff being trained to operate the information system and the high-level staff who actually make the decisions. Third, the mobility of trained staff, whose skills are easily lost if they are transferred or if they seek greener pastures for their IT skills in lucrative urban private sector jobs. 5. Recommendations 1. Involve the beneficiaries: Any e-government project should be implemented with the active participation of the targeted beneficiaries to make it meaningful and successful. 2. Change the processes as well as the data: In tandem with introduction of IT and IT-produced data, decision making processes must be changed to make them based on rational rather than political data, and that means government decision makers must change what they do. 3. Develop your human resources: Human resource development in public sector organisations is vital to the sustainability of e-government projects. 6. Contact B-1 Toghi Housing Scheme Shahra-e-Abdali Quetta Cant. Tel: Fax: hidayat@btdmp.qta.sdnpk.org