Strengthening accountability for improved service delivery: SNV's local capacity development approach

Published on: 19/12/2008

Tod, B. (2008). Strengthening accountability for improved service delivery :  SNV's local capacity development approach. The Hague, The Netherlands, Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 15 p. Download here

Breaking accountability down into five actions, it examines a number of strategies that have produced good results. It finds multi-stakeholder approaches particularly valid and highlights the critical need to empower citizens, especially marginalised groups. Greater investment in developing the accountability capacity of local actors to delegate, finance, perform, inform and enforce, can produce significant improvements in service delivery.

While accountability is not a silver bullet, it is a powerful driver of change and improved performance. To really improve service delivery, it needs to be accompanied by other elements (such as increased resources, improved infrastructure and equipment, better technical capacity and internal reforms), which all are complementary to building capacity for greater accountability.

Examples of SNV"s work in the water sector mentioned in the paper are:

• Capacity building support for the Public Health Engineering Division of the Bhutanese Ministry of Health has resulted in an increase in drinking water coverage from 45% in 1990 to 85% in 2005. The service provider has adopted and institutionalised participatory approaches to community operation and maintenance, and to hygiene education, which communities have enthusiastically supported.

• In collaboration with the Water Resources Development Bureau in southern Ethiopia, SNV designed and supported a comprehensive governance and service delivery assessment of household access to safe water. The survey motivated the Bureau to rehabilitate 16 water schemes in two months and improve water access for 1,600 households. It also generated long-term, institutional momentum for continuous improvement.

• SNV has been working with municipal water companies in Ecuador, Honduras and Nicaragua to enhance efficiency, quality of services and sustainability through organisational development, integrated management and improved local water governance. This has helped to establish the conditions for sustainable and improved service delivery for about 355,000 people in urban areas and has created opportunities for improved livelihoods for about 210,000 rural dwellers.

• Service providers in Ghana are delegated huge responsibilities which can only be fulfilled through better coordination and collaboration with all stakeholders. In the northern capital of Tamale, the service provider can only guarantee water supply for two to three days a week. A multi-stakeholder consultation process facilitated by SNV agreed that the key to improvement lies in a new water governance system. This will involve delegating some of the service provider's responsibilities to decentralised and non-state local providers. [...] The lesson learned is that, even within a weak institutional environment at national level, it is possible to improve performance at local level through better leadership, partnership and coordination.