Governance and Service Delivery

1. Governance and Service Delivery

2. Outline • Why are we discussing service delivery? • General framework for service delivery • What are the main service delivery issues? • Reflection from the WDR 2004 “Making services work for Poor People” • Latest thinking about the politics of service delivery • Possible strategies to address service delivery issues

3. Why are we discussing service delivery? • Service delivery is at the chore of what CARE does • Accessing services is a basic human rights • Poor people needs them the most and are often denied access to basic services • Services often fail to respond to the needs and rights of women • Service delivery is complex :multiple actors, interests and influences

4. Service delivery is… • Government responsibility by financing, providing, regulating and monitoring • about provision, access & use, quality and cultural appropriateness, and outcomes in HDI/MDG • more funding is needed but increased allocation doesn’t always translate in better use and quality • Complex. Variety of actors and methods for delivering services: central gvt provision, contracting out to PS and NGO, decentralise to local government, community participation, direct transfer to HH & variety of issues to address

5. Reflections from the WDR 2004 • Lack of and inadequate policies • Overall weak capacity of policy makers and providers • Limited funding • Failure of representative democracy and limited citizens demand • Limited accountability mechanisms

6. The long and short route to accountability

7. Most recent reflections on service delivery • Reforms are ineffective where they address only the symptoms (staff shortage, training, poor financial mechanism etc.) without engaging their underlying drivers • Look beyond limited political will • Incentives are key to service delivery andare responsible for variations in outcomes and enables/constrains reforms and successful delivery • Politics determine incentives

8. 5 constrains and incentive problems • Political market imperfections: lack of credibility, information asymmetries and social fragmentation • Policy Incoherence: contradiction in policy design, structure and roles, horizontal and vertical issues • Lack of effective performance oversight: formal processes for oversight not implemented or enforced, not clearly defined or understood • Collective action challenges: failure to act for collective self-interest because of multiple actors and heterogeneous groups

9. Lessons learnt • Improving market imperfections: access to info, social and collective action • Decentralisation can enable effective service delivery but there is a need for policies coherence • Performance oversight: bottom-up and top down accountability mechanisms, both important • Involving citizens in design, implementation and monitoring • importance of non-state and informal provision for co-production in fragile contexts