Volume XI, Number 3, Fall 2005

Issue Topic: Democratic Evaluation

Promising Practices

Getting Creative in Holding Officials Accountable

Dennis Arroyo describes the performance-monitoring mechanisms that nongovernment agencies use to make public officials accountable to citizens.

In The Emperor's New Clothes, a lowly child dares tell his king that he has nothing on. Today ordinary folk dare hold their kings accountable, exposing the nakedness of their rhetoric. Contrary to what policy documents say, their emperors have no roads, schools, and clinics. Nongovernment organizations (NGO) around the world are now multiplying their own social accountability mechanisms. These are methods by which ordinary citizens participate in exacting accountability from their officials.

Take the case of the Children's Road Survey in Bangalore, India. To curb public works corruption, the Public Affairs Centre sent children with checklists to monitor the streets of the city. The youth, aged 12 to 14 years old, were first briefed on the various critical road dimensions like the efficacy of the drainage system and impediments to safety. The children were each sent to observe 300 meters of road. Their booklets included instructions like, “Look for spots where the opening of the shoulder drain is at a higher level than the road surface (i.e., water cannot freely flow to the drain).”

The survey graphically captured the poor quality of the roads, and the children presented their findings to the Bangalore municipal commissioner at a public hearing. This made headlines in the city's newspapers. Actual improvements followed.

A key concern of NGOs that apply social accountability mechanisms is the budget for social services. Crafting the budget is not a mere academic exercise. Powerful stakeholders maneuver to control these funds, which are often misused. To safeguard the funds and programs for the public, NGOs help prepare the budget and also track and monitor program expenditures and performance.

In 2004 I did a review of social accountability mechanisms in Asia for the World Bank, covering 50 examples.¹ Following I provide a sample of these mechanisms from my own country, the Philippines.

Expenditure tracking enables citizens and groups to monitor how government and recipients of aid actually spend funds.

• Community-driven development combines participatory budgeting and close expenditure tracking. In the Kalahi village development program, NGOs train villagers to identify what infrastructure they need most. They are guided in preparing formal project proposals and budgets, and the best one in the municipality gets government funding. Spending is closely monitored by the general village assembly.
  
• Lifestyle checks examine the statement of assets and liabilities of public officials, which the law requires them to file every year. NGO agents verify the statements and follow up with office and house visits. If officials' assets are far greater than can be accounted for by their salaries or savings, they are investigated. Lifestyle checks led to the discovery of one president's secret mansions, and the popular outcry helped remove him from office.
  
• Investigative reporting produces in-depth articles, especially on corruption. The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism has published close to 200 articles in major Philippine dailies and magazines. The reports on graft and influence-peddling in high places have shaken the po-litical landscape, forcing the government to act.
  
• Surveys on corruption get data on people's first-hand experiences with fraud and identify which agencies are most prone to it. The NGO Social Weather Stations quantify the frequency of bribery in relation to paying taxes or getting licenses. The surveys also obtain data on the percentages paid to get government contracts.

Performance monitoring gets people to use data to assess the impact of public projects.

• Procurement Watch trains fellow NGOs on the intricacies of procurement. It sends observers, armed with checklists, to official bidding sessions. When observers discover anomalies, such as the padding of prices, they are brought to the attention of agency heads for rectification. Due to reforms in its procurement process in 2001, the Philippine Department of Education reports that their textbook prices were lowered by as much as 65%.
  
• Government Watch, an NGO, sends its volunteers to public project sites to report the deviation between documented inputs and actual results. For example, corruption in the delivery of textbooks resulted in five public school children having to share one book. Government Watch successfully partnered with the Boy Scouts to monitor textbook delivery. The shortage has since been addressed.

Information and communication technology promote accountability by collecting data on the public's scrutiny of the government.

• SMS (short message service) databases takes advantage of the popularity of SMS or text messages. For example, if a clerk at city hall asks for grease money, the citizen can send a text message through his or her cell phone to the hotline number of the Office of the Ombudsman. When the names of the same offenders keep appearing in the database, the claims are investigated for corrective action.

¹ Arroyo, D. (2004). Summary paper on the stocktaking of social accountability initiatives in Asia and the Pacific. Washington, DC: The World Bank Institute. siteresources.worldbank.org

Dennis Arroyo
Director
National Planning and Policy Staff. National Economic and Development Authority
12 St. Josemaria Escriva Drive
Ortigas Center
Pasig City 1605
Philippines
Email: dmarroyo@neda.gov.ph