Measuring and Assessing Democratic Governance Report of the UNDP Workshop on Measuring and Assessing Democratic Governance

Transcription

1 Measuring and Assessing Democratic Governance Report of the UNDP Workshop on Measuring and Assessing Democratic Governance Bangkok, November 2007 UNDP Regional Centre in Bangkok and UNDP Oslo Governance Centre 1

2 Table of Contents Executive Summary Introduction I. Democratic Governance and Why Measure It? I.1 Proliferation of governance assessments and indicators: Who uses them and for what purpose? I.2 UNDP s approach to measuring democratic governance I.3 Governance assessments: A corporate priority in UNDP s Strategic Plan I.4 Regional context: State of democracy and governance in the Asia-Pacific region II. Methodological Issues for Measuring Governance II.1 General guiding principles of governance indicators II.2 Levels of indicators and ownership: Need for disaggregation III. Innovative Approaches for Measuring Democratic Governance: An Asian Perspective III.1 Mapping the vulnerability of countries to corruption: A new index III.2 National measurement initiative: The Philippines governance indicators survey tools III.3 National measurement initiative: Assessing democratic governance in Mongolia IV. Entry Points for Governance Assessments and National Ownership IV.1 Drawing from the Philippines and Mongolia case studies to identify other entry points IV.2 Maximizing the policy impact of governance assessments IV.3 The Bhutanese experience of MDG needs assessment and costing IV.4 The missing governance links in the MDG analysis V. Applying Governance Analysis and Measurements into UNDP Programming V.1 Using national governance data for UNDAF, CCA and other national development frameworks VI. Future directions for the Governance Indicators Project VI.1 OGC s resources and services VI.2 Specific requests and suggestions for additional support Annex 1 Workshop agenda Annex 2 List of participants 2

3 Executive Summary Existing governance-related global indicators are used primarily by external stakeholders to compare and rank countries on diverse aspects of the vast and complex field of governance. These measures are in general neither sufficiently propoor nor gender-sensitive, nor are they sub-nationally disaggregated to assist policymakers monitor and evaluate governance reforms at the country level. Most importantly, these global datasets are only of limited help in policy-making processes: they seldom point to institutions as the cause of governance challenges, nor do they help identify appropriate operational solutions. Moreover, such tools often lack national ownership and engagement in the assessment process, and do not address the capacity deficits that exist to ensure an effective monitoring system. In response to these shortcomings, UNDP and the Oslo Governance Centre has over the past four years spearheaded the Governance Indicators Project which provides support to nationally owned processes for assessing and monitoring democratic governance. In view of rapidly increasing country demand for UNDP s support in this area, a key initiative on nationally owned democratic governance assessments the theme of this workshop was also included in UNDP s Strategic Plan for In this context, the UNDP Oslo Governance Centre and the UNDP Regional Centre in Bangkok hosted a workshop in Bangkok to bring together staff from UNDP Country Offices and UN Country Teams across the Asia-Pacific region, as well as national partners (Government and civil society) in selected countries, to (1) raise understanding and awareness of governance measurement approaches, and (2) to identify important entry points for UNDP, UN Country Teams and national stakeholders to respond to the various needs for monitoring the quality of democratic governance within a country. This regional workshop for Asia and the Pacific built on a similar international workshop hosted by OGC in August 2007 in which 22 UNDP Country Offices from various regions participated (workshop report available at: The purposes of the workshop were: 1. To develop the capacities of UN/UNDP country staff and national partners on best practices and lessons learned in national efforts to monitor governance. 2. To provide a framework for UNDP and UNCT corporate support to governance monitoring built on country needs and demands. 3. To explore the potential for establishing a community of practice in this area and a platform for mutual support across the participating countries. 4. To foster, catalyze and strengthen national based networks and partnerships within participating countries to contribute to national ownership and create a platform for national capacity development. The event took place over two days: the first day was primarily focused on existing methods for measuring democratic governance, while the second day examined the processes of governance assessments. Both workshop days combined presentations from experts and practitioners and active working sessions in smaller break-out groups. 3

4 Introduction Governance assessments and associated indicators have now become a growth industry, and a rising trend within this industry is the production of indicators that enable the ranking of countries and international comparisons on the basis of externally-set yardsticks of good governance. For UNDP, it is important that democratic governance initiatives are both conforming to global standards and also grounded in local ownership. Democratic governance is more likely to be sustained if targets for attainment and expectations of how governments should perform are formulated by those who live within the political system. And through the transparency of information stemming from a nationally driven assessment, it also provides a catalyst for greater citizen engagement in democracy processes and for demanding greater effectiveness of government. The focus of this workshop was on the variety of tools and methods that can be deployed at the country level to inform policy makers and enable them to institutionalize the governance reforms needed to achieve the MDGs and accelerate human development. More specifically, the workshop aimed to examine recent experience by UNCT/UNDP and national partners in (i) developing the capacities of national stakeholder groups including government, the media and civil society, in the use and development of nationally owned and locally developed governance indicators, (ii) in facilitating processes for developing indicators around national developing plans, and (iii) in enhancing existing and new governance indicators through a greater focus on poverty and gender disaggregation. UNDP s Governance Indicators Project is work in progress. The purpose of the workshop was not only to share some lessons learned from the project until now, but also to advance the project in cooperation with UN and national partners in the Asia- Pacific region. The programme of the workshop addressed the following themes during the first day: Overview of common and well-known governance indices and how they are used; The UNDP approach to measuring democratic governance, highlighted as a corporate priority in the newly adopted UNDP Strategic Plan ; The state of democracy and governance in Asia and the Pacific; Methods for governance-related data collection and the need for disaggregating governance indicators; Presentation of innovative approaches for measuring democratic governance in Asia and the Pacific, including country case studies of national governance monitoring initiatives and a regional measurement initiative on corruption. Political, programmatic and operational issues related to the processes of measuring democratic governance were addressed on the second day, including the following: Entry points for monitoring governance, including the National Development Plan and MDG-based planning processes; UNDP support for country processes and for fostering national ownership of governance assessments; 4

5 Application of governance analysis and governance measurements into UNDP programming, such as the UNDAF and the CCA. This report is presented in six sections: Section 1: Democratic Governance and Why Measure It? reviews briefly UNDP s approach to measuring democratic governance, as well as other challenges related to its measurement, with particular attention to the Asia-Pacific context. Section 2: Methodological Issues for Measuring Governance pulls together different methodological contributions to the workshop, with emphasis on the policy relevance of governance indicators and the need for disaggregation. Section 3: Innovative Approaches for Measuring Democratic Governance: An Asian Perspective examines the methods, approaches and partnerships applied in two national measurement initiatives (Democratic Governance Indicators and MDG 9 in Mongolia, and the national mapping of producers and users of indicators in the Philippines), and presents a regional initiative to measure a country s vulnerability to corruption. Section 4: Entry Points for Governance Assessments and National Ownership considers internal drivers of governance assessments, such as national development plans, MDG-based planning and MDG monitoring processes, country-led reports, etc. Section 5: Applying Governance Analysis and Measurements into UNDP Programming proposes possible ways to use national governance data for UNDAF, CCA and other UNCT/UNDP development frameworks. Section 6: Future directions for the Governance Indicators Project compiles suggestions received from participants on how the Project can best support UNDP COs to enable them to assist national partners in conducting governance assessments. 5

6 I. Democratic Governance and Why Measure It? I.1 Proliferation of governance assessments and indicators: Who uses them and for what purpose? An increasing number of organizations are giving greater priority to the need to assess democracy, governance and human rights as part of their development assistance programmes. Assessment tools and frameworks build on a number of known and less known democracy and governance-related global datasets which enable comparisons over time and across countries and regions (see Governance Indicators: A Users Guide produced by the UNDP Oslo Governance Centre). Many, if not most of the indicator systems, are almost exclusively used as country-ranking instruments, intended to inform investors, donors, the media, academic institutions, or civil society advocates on issues ranging from aid allocation, to business investment, to advocacy, and so on. The leading firm in this growing industry of governance assessments and associated indicators is the World Bank Institute, which produces the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI). The WGI research project covers 212 countries and measures six dimensions of governance between 1996 and 2006, with a set of aggregate indicators based on hundreds of individual variables taken from 33 data sources and provided by 30 different organizations. While this data is indeed a rich source of information for a range of analysis, it does not necessarily point to particular institutions or institutional arrangements as the cause of governance challenges, nor does it help identify appropriate operational solutions and performance improvement processes. It can thus be of only limited help in policy-making processes. Furthermore, such tools often lack national ownership and engagement in the assessment process, rarely include the necessary disaggregation to capture the experiences and perceptions of marginalized groups in society, and do not address the capacity deficits that exist to ensure an effective monitoring system. I.2 UNDP s approach to measuring democratic governance UNDP s interest in governance indicators does not spring from an interest in comparing different countries on their governance performance. For UNDP, the value of a nationally owned governance indicator system is that it serves as a critical accountability mechanism for local stakeholders rather than donors. One way of enabling such nationally-driven processes is to complement a set of universal core governance indicators with a set of satellite indicators reflecting the particularities of a country and/or regional contexts. A nationally owned system also provides upward / internal rather than external pressure for reform. In other words, UNDP s interest is to help policy-makers within each country to identify governance problems that need to be addressed, and to have at their disposal the means for assessing the effectiveness of policy reforms that are instituted to address those problems. And through the transparency of information stemming from a nationally-driven governance assessment, it also provides a catalyst for greater citizen engagement in democracy processes and for demanding greater effectiveness of government. 6

7 For indicators to provide more depth into a particular policy issue, UNDP emphasizes that they must be disaggregated: only then will invisible groups receive special attention in policy-making processes. Country-specific and disaggregated indicators will help identify specific institutions and/or practices perpetuating the unfair and/or sub-standard provision of services to these groups. UNDP s Governance Indicators Project supports a holistic approach to measuring governance, based on eight central features of an effective indicator system: 1. The democracy/governance assessment system is anchored in the national development plan or other political commitment such as the PRSP or the national development strategy. 2. Indicators are selected and generated through a transparent, participatory and inclusive process. 3. There is an institutionalized procedure to collect data from a variety of sources (surveys, administrative data, national statistics, Civil Society) and an institutional base for storing this information and making it publicly accessible. 4. The data sources are politically acceptable to all key stakeholders. 5. The data sources enable disaggregation in terms of the poor, and also in terms of gender. 6. National institutions including academia are used to develop the system so that national capacity is strengthened. 7. There is a targeted approach to developing the capacities of national stakeholders including government policy makers, Civil Society, the media, parliament, political parties as well as the national statistics agency or office. 8. Resources are available to ensure the sustainability of the system through repetition of the assessment to enable monitoring of improvements in democratic governance. I.3 Governance assessments: A corporate priority in UNDP s Strategic Plan UNDP s strategic plan for proposes to restructure the support provided in relation to democratic governance into three broad areas: 1. Fostering inclusive participation: Empowering the poor, women, youth, indigenous peoples and other marginalized groups, through expanding the core channels of civic engagement, at the national, regional and local levels (i.e. strengthening the demand for democratic governance): 2. Strengthening responsive institutions: Ensuring that the state accounts for and meets the needs, priorities and interests of all people, including women, the poor, youth and minorities, by promoting the core governing institutions of representation and accountability at the national, regional and local level (i.e. enhancing the delivery of democratic governance) 3. Policies and principles: Promoting knowledge and practices about democratic governance grounded in UN values, at national, regional, and global levels, with 7

8 particular emphasis on the promotion of human rights, gender equality and anticorruption. An important initiative in the Strategic Plan is on nationally owned democratic governance assessments the theme of this workshop serving the need of policymakers, and the realization of outcomes in all three pillars of UNDP s new strategic plan. A key objective in this vein will be to integrate the results of governance measurement initiatives into planning exercises by national partners, and in national human development reports, PRS, national MDG progress reports, and initiatives to localize the MDGs. I.4 Regional context: State of democracy and governance in the Asia-Pacific region In the Asia-Pacific region, interest for home-grown governance assessments certainly pre-dates UNDP s initiative in this area. However, experience so far has shown that the governance data collected in the course of these assessments is not effectively used to inform policies. There is therefore a strong case for supporting Asian policy makers in performing a more rigorous analysis of locally collected data and indicators, and in connecting this analysis to the formulation and monitoring of policies. Governance assessments should be geared towards this end. Statistical offices in the region are typically seen as less important than, say, the ministry of foreign affairs or the ministry of planning. A shift in institutional culture is therefore required to promote the roles of national statistical institutes in collecting governance data and developing associated indicators, notably through household surveys. A word of caution was issued against limiting our interpretation of the concept of national ownership to government actors only. While an assessment may be initiated by the Government, it can and should also involve civil society, academia, the media and other non-state actors if the process is truly meant to be nationally owned, i.e. owned by a broad base of constituencies. The pool of governance data needs to be enlarged from purely objective measures to including perception-based data as well. As shown by the sobering results of a recent survey of the State of Democracy in Latin America conducted by UNDP, there seems to be a growing mismatch between people s needs and expectations of what democracy can do for them, and their low level of satisfaction about what democracy has actually delivered for them. A recent survey of the state of democracy in South Asia conducted by the New Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) revealed that there is a real aspiration for democracy amongst the people in the region, but it remains unclear what ends of democracy are desired, namely inclusive political participation or efficient delivery of social services. Two sets of interrelated questions were discussed: What is democracy doing to the countries in this region? Conversely, what is the region doing to the concept of democracy and its practical implementation? The domestication of democracy in the region has led to several innovations in the institutional matrix of certain countries. In Bangladesh, for instance, the concept of a caretaker government was developed out of the challenge faced with regards to regime change. In Sri Lanka, the Constitutional Council was created to address the problem of appointments of cronies in key positions. In India and Pakistan, electoral quotas were instituted to increase the 8

9 representation of women in the local government. This struggle between the fence (the institutional design) and the field (the working of democracy) is never-ending, therefore multiple indicators and measurement methods are required to capture this dynamic. One measurement technique employed for the survey was an attitudinal survey covering 19,000 respondents across the sub-region. For the first time in South Asia, there was a shift from expert assessments to people s self-assessment of the state of democracy in their country. In all five countries surveyed, when people were asked about their level of trust in various institutions (army, police, national, provincial, local government, courts, etc.), the army ranked highest out of ten institutions, and political parties and the police were consistently ranked lowest. Why were two instruments of state coercion the army and the police regarded so differently by respondents? Case studies, a second measurement method used in the survey, generated some unconventional facts on democracy, such as the finding that more police does not result in a sense of increased security, as conveyed by the poor in Bangladesh who were chased out of certain neighbourhoods by the police. A key message of the survey is that people s idea of democracy in South Asia challenges the Western concepts of democracy. While academia in the West is concerned with not overloading the concept of democracy with other values, Asian scholars drawing from perception-based surveys such as this one are increasingly advocating for an enlargement of the definition of democracy to encompass complementary values such as dignity, self-respect, human rights, justice, and so on. Only then will democracy be meaningful to those who have thus far not been able to access their share of the democratic dividend, such as lower castes in India. For UNDP, the focus is not on making a normative judgment about the political system in place in any given country, neither about the institutional architecture of democracy. The UNDP emphasis is rather on assessing how democratic principles are translated into development gains for all, including the excluded groups. A case was made on the interdependence of democracy and human rights in the context of the systematic under-representation of women, the poor and other minorities in political processes and their unequal access to social services. In this sense, democracy was found to be too narrow as a normative frame underlying a governance system. If there is a real commitment to ensuring that everyone benefits from democracy, human rights must be seen as core principles underlying the delivery of democracy. II. Methodological Issues for Measuring Democratic Governance II.1 General guiding principles of governance indicators The first part of this session reviewed the Users Guide (second edition published in 2006) developed by the Oslo Governance Centre to catalogue existing international sources of governance indicators: What are they? What are they used for? How to use and not to use those indicators? Intended for non-specialist users, the Users Guide contains 35 sources of inter-country governance indicators. 9

10 Three golden rules of using governance indicators were presented. First, one must use a range of indicators: the single governance indicator which captures the subtleties and intricacies of national situation, in a manner which enables global, nonvalue laden comparisons does not exist. The key is a balanced set with sufficient but not superfluous information. Second, use an indicator as a first question not a last. Often, indicators can be developed step-by-step as more information becomes available. Going through the following steps may be helpful: Yes/No Asking the basic question, does a problem exist? Number After determining that a problem exists, determining the size of the problem. Percentage Putting the problem into context. Significance Use a significance test to examine whether the problem is evenly spread or certain groups face more of a problem. The third golden rule is to understand an indicator before you use it. For instance, how is voter turnout defined? It could either be votes cast as a percentage of voters registered, or votes cast as a percentage of voting age population. How, who and where is the data compiled? II.2 Levels of indicators and ownership: Need for disaggregation This session presented the framework developed by OGC ( Measuring Democratic Governance: A Framework for Selecting Pro-Poor and Gender Sensitive Indicators ) to assist policy-makers in monitoring democratic governance at the country level, in seven areas: parliamentary development, electoral systems, human rights, justice, access to information & the media, decentralisation & local governance, and public administration reform & anti-corruption. At the outset of the session, participants broke into groups to discuss the question of why should governance indicators be pro-poor and gender sensitive? Participants referred to a core set of underlying values and principles non-discrimination, meaningful participation and accountability to all, even more so to the most vulnerable groups as being a strong justification for making governance indicators pro-poor and gender sensitive. Another justification was found in the rapidly widening disparities within countries, identified as the biggest challenge to achieving the MDGs. The term pro-poor was found by some to be unduly restrictive due to its narrow focus on income poverty. If the intention is to capture vulnerability and exclusion, other groups (indigenous peoples, for example) should be considered, who might not see themselves as poor in the economic sense of the term. To capture the full spectrum of such vulnerable groups, further disaggregation will be required beyond income and gender: ethnicity (female/male; poor/non-poor), location (rural/urban; female/male, etc.) and disability, among others, could be used to further disaggregate governance indicators. Two basic principles of democracy 1 underlie pro-poor and gender sensitive governance indicators: popular control over public decision-making and decisionmakers, and equality between citizens (men vs. women, poor vs. non-poor) in the exercise of that control. Governance indicators also aim to measure the realization 1 These two principles are drawn from International IDEA s Democracy Assessment Framework, available at 10

11 of seven normative values underpinning democratic governance: participation, equity, transparency, accountability, responsiveness, representation and efficiency. Governance indicators can be made gender sensitive in four ways: 1) They may simply be disaggregated by sex (i.e. the value of the indicator is calculated separately for men and women, allowing comparisons to be made between them), or 2) they be gender specific (i.e. measuring governance practices which are specifically targeted at women or men), or 3) they may be implicitly gendered (i.e. making no explicit reference to gender, but of particular relevance to women or men), or 4) they may be chosen by women (i.e. need not refer to gender at all; could simply reflect differences in men s and women s priorities regarding different areas of governance.) On this last point, a suggestion was made not to restrict the choice of gender sensitive indicators to women only: indicators chosen by men might in fact be more powerful in mobilising policy attention if policymakers are predominantly male. Similarly, governance indicators may be made pro-poor in the same four ways. Group exercises on the flow chart methodology presented as a tool for selecting indicators allowed participants to explore relationships between indicators for policy analysis. One way to do so is to link input and output indicators to assess the effectiveness of interventions. The example of a training programme for women candidates was given. To assess the impact of this programme, some output indicators could measure the proportion of women trained who stood for election, or the proportion of those who stood for election who were successful. But a measure of female representation in parliament will not say anything about who these female MPs consult with and how they develop their policy agenda. A more meaningful indicator could measure, for example, whether there is a consultation mechanism in place for poor women to voice their priorities and interests to these women MPs, or whether a higher proportion of women MPs led to greater consideration of women s issues in Parliament. The flow chart methodology was found to be particularly useful in helping to identify where data gaps are especially in terms of disaggregated data. In this sense, it was said to be a powerful advocacy tool to call for strengthening the evidence base to policy-making. In closing, OGC emphasized that the role of UNDP is to act as a facilitator of multistakeholder consultations to develop governance indicators; UNDP does not take part in the actual selection of indicators. III. Innovative Approaches for Measuring Democratic Governance: An Asian Perspective III.1 Mapping the vulnerability of countries to corruption: A new index This session presented the Corruption Vulnerability Index (CVI) developed in the context of the preparation of the forthcoming regional Human Development Report on corruption 2. The CVI was developed as an alternative to popular measures of corruption (such as the Corruption Perception Index of Transparency International and the Control of Corruption Index of the World Bank) which are heavily driven by perception. These indices rely heavily on perception-based data, and mirror surveys have shown that perceived corruption is not a reliable indicator of experienced corruption. Many of 2 A separate Technical Background Paper is devoted to the CVI, available upon request. 11

12 these indices are geared towards international business interests and fail to capture the impact of corruption on the lives of the poor. Ratings given by perception measures may also harm the interests of poor countries through the decline in foreign investment resulting from an unfavorable rating on the CPI / CCI. The motivation for developing the CVI was to move away from perception and to devise a more objective measure. It is important to observe that the CVI is a measure of the vulnerability of a country to corruption or a measure of the climate of corruption. The CVI attempts to map the structural and objective factors that predispose a country to corruption. As such, the CVI is not a measure of corruption, perception or experienced, but rather an attempt to gauge the potential for, the susceptibility to, corruption. The CVI aggregates 21 indicators selected on the basis of two criteria. First, each indicator must have an objective existence, i.e. it must not be based on perceptions of subjective assessments. Second, indicators must be theoretically and empirically justifiable. Data for the construction of the CVI was taken from international sources (UNSTAT online, World Bank, etc.) Some examples of indicators in the CVI include: highest marginal tax rate (individual rate), start-up procedures to register a business (number), military expenditure (% of GDP), public investment (% of GDP), ratio of the top 20% to bottom 20%, access to improved water source (% of population), physicians per 1,000 people, mining (% of GDP), FDI (% of GDP), ODA (% of GDP), informal sector (trade + construction + other) as % of GDP, etc. In breakout groups, participants contrasted the CVI framework with the OGC framework for developing pro-poor and gender sensitive indicators. While it is important to keep in mind that the original motivation for the CVI was to find a more objective measure of corruption than perception-based indices, participants nonetheless noted the lack of disaggregation to unbundle the poverty and gender dimensions of the individual indicators forming the CVI. Similarly to the CPI, the CVI does not seem to capture the experience of the poor / women in accessing social services. In this context, a suggestion was made to examine whether there was any correlation between the CVI and indices measuring human development, such as the HDI. III.2 National measurement initiative: The Philippines governance indicators survey tools This session presented the experience of the National College of Public Administration and Governance and the University of the Philippines in developing a Users Guide of indicator sources and institutions engaged in providing governance indicators in the Philippines. The Guide presents and assembles, whenever available and allowable, data on the institutions generating possible governance indicators information, their location and contact numbers, how they generate data, how the indicators they use are determined and measured, and the frequency by which these are released. A second step to this mapping exercise was to conduct a survey to investigate which indicators are used and not used by national decision makers in their work. This survey revealed that many indicators are available but public awareness of them is low. The need to inform the public of possible sources of indicators identified by the survey was underlined by the survey. 12

13 The next steps for the project will be to update the User s Guide with new sources of indicators identified in the survey. An assessment of the existing capacities of national data collection agencies and statistical systems is also needed to inform the design of a program to strengthen national capacities for data collection. Finally, a composite index of governance indicators could be developed from the existing catalogue of individual indicators. III.3 National measurement initiative: Assessing democratic governance in Mongolia Mongolia hosted the Fifth International Conference of New or Restored Democracies (ICNRD-5) in 2003, and committed to implementing action plans to monitor democratic progress over time. A UNDP project on Follow-up to the ICNRD-5 was implemented by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and generated a set of Democratic Governance Indicators to assess the state of governance in Mongolia. The activities were state-led but broadly inclusive, with participation of the parliament, the national statistical office, civil society organizations, local municipalities, academia, the media and the judiciary. The specificities of Mongolia shaped the type of indicators developed for the assessment as well as the design of the assessment itself. Some of those specificities include a small population, a small-scale economy, pastoral cattlebreeding and nomadic lifestyle, a profound gap between urban and non-urban areas, state paternalism, etc. Examples of satellite indicators developed for Mongolia include the following: civil, social and economic rights for migrants, number of migrants not registered, political affiliation of members of election organization, public perception of internal democracy within parties, etc. Focus group discussions were held to capture the views of social groups with special consideration, the views of marginal and vulnerable people, and the disparities between urban and rural populations. For instance, discussion groups were formed (in urban and rural areas) for herders, the poor, gold diggers ( ninjas ), migrants, the unemployed, the retired, women, etc. Some key lessons were learned in this process. Mongolia s initiative on Democratic Governance Indicators contributed to developing a culture of evidence-based decision-making and awareness raising on governance issues and challenges through public fora and individual interviews. The sustainability and institutionalization of the process remains the main challenge considering the methodological aspects as well as cost implications. Finally, ownership by the general public and civil society involvement in the governance measurement the very purpose of DGIs - remains weak. IV. Entry Points for Governance Assessments and National Ownership IV.1 Drawing from the Philippines and Mongolia case studies to identify other entry points Participants broke into groups to discuss what processes or products from the Philippines and/or Mongolia case studies could be relevant entry points for conducting a governance assessment in their respective country: the formulation or monitoring of a National Development Plan / PRS which has a strong component on 13

14 governance? An MDG needs assessment and costing exercise? The production of a national Human Development Report? A governance assessment conducted jointly with a bilateral donor or a national research institute? In general, participants supported an incremental approach to governance assessments, focusing on a specific sector or theme first, and expanding the scope of the assessment to other sectors at a later stage. A rigorous assessment performed in one particular sector is likely to generate more buy-in from national actors than an ambitious governance assessment undertaken nationwide with its associated methodological challenges. The national buy-in secured in the first phase of a sector-specific assessment will provide the necessary support base for scaling up the exercise in other sectors subsequently. Several types of entry points for conducting sector-specific governance assessments embedded in national processes were identified by participants in their particular country context, such as the conduct of a baseline survey to inform a programme on access to justice in Sri Lanka and in the Maldives, the development of a monitoring framework to assess the implementation of the UN Convention Against Corruption in Viet Nam, the monitoring of anti-corruption programmes in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the measurement of the Gross National Happiness Index in Bhutan, the monitoring of the implementation of a governance policy paper in Lao PDR, and the production of sub-national HDRs in Indonesia. Indonesia just started rolling out a governance assessment with the objective to derive a score on the Indonesia Democracy Index (IDI) at both the national and subnational levels. The IDI assesses three thematic areas: civil liberties, political rights and democratic institutions. A panel of experts (involving academics and government) was formed to select these three areas, and these, along with a tentative list of indicators, were then debated in public fora at the provincial level. In Cambodia, the Ministry of Planning attempted to undertake a nationwide governance assessment, but assessments of various thematic areas have been led by different ministries and the lack of coordination at the central level between these various initiatives has led to a multiplicity of approaches and methodologies. In the newly endorsed National Development Plan of Bhutan, planning and budgeting are decentralized to the local level. A governance assessment would be useful to assess the effectiveness and fairness of this new decentralized structure. For instance, the plan requires that women be represented in the local councils, but indicators would be needed to measure whether the participation of these women has any impact on decision-making. IV.2 Maximizing the policy impact of governance assessments This presentation stressed the importance of aligning governance assessments with broader national processes in order to maximize their policy impact. The concept of national ownership a critical dimension for any assessment to have an impact on policy was dissected into three components. First, we may ask ownership of what, which calls for a careful examination of the methodology used and the extent to which it has been contextualized to a country s specificities. Secondly, we may ask ownership by whom : who are the various stakeholders taking part in the assessment process, from the identification of the initial guiding questions, to the development of the indicators, to interpretation and use of data for policy reform or advocacy? The third question, ownership for what purpose, calls for the 14

15 formulation of clear policy objectives as a starting point for an assessment, with clear identification of the policy processes it plans to feed into: national development plans, budgets / MTEF, MDG strategies, etc. Asymmetries of ownership in the PRS and the budget processes were also discussed: different stakeholders, with different agendas, priorities, and limitations, dominate the PRS and budget processes. Such an ownership analysis with regard to the various policy processes helps identify who to engage which, in the budget or the PRS process, to maximize the policy impact of data generated by a governance assessment. Finally, a mapping of various reporting documents at the local, sectoral and national levels, categorized by type of indicators generated by these documents (input, output, outcome and impact indicators), helped identify existing data sources which could be used when conducting a governance assessment. IV.3 The Bhutanese experience of MDG needs assessment and costing This session presented the experience of Bhutan in undertaking an MDG needs assessment and costing exercise in the area of good governance, a process owned and led by the Planning Commission, and linked to the formulation of Bhutan s 10 th National Development Plan ( ). The costing exercise was undertaken by four thematic task forces constituted around themes, and composed of representatives from the ten Ministries, civil society and the private sector. One task force was responsible for assessing investments needed in relation to the cross-cutting issues of environment, good governance, capacity development and gender. The costing of good governance and capacity development interventions was done for seven key institutions (e.g. Local Development Commission, Royal Civil Service Commission, Anti-Corruption Commission, Election Commission, etc.) that have a bearing on good governance and democracy. The major interventions identified and costed included staff salaries, costs related to upgrading qualifications of staff, manuals and equipment (computers, printers, digital cameras, etc.) Valuable lessons were drawn form the experience of Bhutan. The inclusion of the non-mdg cross-cutting themes of gender, governance and capacity development was decided upon through consensus-building amongst the task forces not through imposition of a decision made at the top. However, the lack of standard methodologies and the lack of indicators on non-mdg areas such as governance complicated the identification of interventions and the costing of these governance interventions. The development of a needs assessment / costing template for this sector along the lines of those developed by the Millennium Project for health, education, water & sanitation, etc. is needed. Participants questioned the institutional setup for costing governance by suggesting that linkages with other sectors (health, education, etc.) might not be readily made by a stand-alone task force on governance operating in parallel to other task forces. A second concern raised by participants related to equating the realization of good governance with human resource and capital investments in seven institutions of governance: is this approach apt at capturing the cross-cutting nature of governance in relation to the other sectors? Finally, one participant observed that while the costing of governance was focused on inputs, the real challenge was to measure the extent to which these inputs would 15

16 translate into better outcomes. What conclusions should we draw if outcomes are not achieved in spite of the investments made? Does it mean that more money is needed, or rather that we should invest in different strategies? IV.4 The missing governance links in the MDG analysis In this session, a draft framework was presented to integrate governance into the sectoral MDG analysis, from the assessment of MDG needs to the delivery of services. The framework is intended to complement the existing MDG methodology by adding a focus on processes to ensure that inputs will indeed translate into outcomes. There has been little integration of governance into MDG-based planning. This can first be explained by shortcomings in the process of doing the needs assessment exercise (a stand-alone governance task force risks losing its mainstreaming value). It can also be explained by shortcomings in the methodology used to assess and cost MDG interventions: some costs are missing (e.g. communication strategies to sensitize people to their entitlements) and other costs are distorted (e.g. unit costs used are average unit costs and do not reflect the higher unit costs which would be incurred when delivering services to isolated or disadvantaged communities.) The framework proposes a methodology to disaggregate the missing governance links between MDG inputs (as identified with the needs assessment templates) and MDG outcomes (equitable achievement of MDG targets and indicators). For instance, it is typically assumed that investments in education will lead to increased enrolments for all children. This framework asks who is left out, and investigates what keeps unfair and ineffective practices in place. These missing governance links between inputs and outcomes are disaggregated to reveal democratic deficits (deficits in participation, representation, equity, transparency, etc.), and capacity deficits, here examined in terms of capacities of local governments to respond to citizens voice, and to exercise accountability. A second round of questions is then raised to unveil another set of assumptions that outcomes will be sustained over time and will reach the most marginalized. An empowerment check is run to examine whether voice and accountability channels are in place: do citizens know that they are supposed to claim their entitlements? Do they know how to claim them? Do they have the ability to affect decision-making processes? For instance, an investigation of the missing governance links in the health policy design will reveal a democratic deficit in accessibility: Are certain marginalized groups (lower castes) prevented from receiving healthcare services due to castebased discrimination? A matching capacity deficit is identified: Are local authorities able to develop complaint mechanisms and other societal watchdog functions? The empowerment checks raise a second round of questions related to complementary democratic values without which accessibility of healthcare will not be realized: Are marginalized groups aware of their rights and entitlements, including the right to complain and the process for lodging a complaint? Here, the complementary value is transparency. 16

17 Participants expressed interest in the framework and confirmed there was a real need for such a tool to make the MDG analysis more governance sensitive. There is an assumption underlying the MDG costing exercise that it is business as usual and all that is required is larger investments. In fact, the way we do business must change in order to achieve the MDGs, and this framework provides useful guidance to do this. Suggestions were also made to make the human rights dimensions embedded in the framework more explicit, with more attention to the capacities of rights-holders (CSOs, women s groups, etc.) not only those of duty-bearers. V. Applying Governance Analysis and Measurements into UNDP Programming V.1 Using national governance data for UNDAF, CCA and other national development frameworks This session presented various ways and entry points to use national governance data for UNDAF, CCA and other national development frameworks. Four questions were raised and discussed in this presentation: (1) What kind of (mandatory) CO documents require some form of governance analysis (e.g. UNDAF, CCA, CPAP etc.)? (2) How do we set a baseline and make use of indicators for this purpose? (3) How can programme staff and CO senior management (RC, RR, DRR etc) use national governance data in their line of work? And (4) How can different UN agencies in countries work together to help counterparts generate more national governance data (or carry out assessments)? Previously, the UNDAF was very much of a UN document but a recent shift towards enhancing the principle of national ownership led to the UNDAF now drawing more on national instruments and being seen more as part of a government-led analysis. The new question for us then becomes where can the UN add value in this process? One key comparative advantage of the UN in this regard is its close relations with a large circle of stakeholders beyond Government, particularly with civil society and academia. To reach an agreement with partners about the root causes of priority development problems, the UNCT must perform the following roles when participating in government-led analytical work: (1) Identify otherwise-unseen trends in the data and excluded groups that have been overlooked; (2) Identify disparities that suggest unequal treatment and the possibility of discrimination; (3) Help partners to conduct more detailed causality analysis of identified problems, to identify the root causes that contribute to multiple problems; (4) Help partners to apply a human rights based analysis, including gender; and (5) Help integrate capacity assessment into the national development process or help to interpret the results of capacity assessments to inform the national development framework and UNDAF. Approaching development from the perspective of human rights creates particular demands for data that are not satisfied by traditional socio-economic indicators alone, and requires the selection and compilation of indicators for rights-based development. The compilation of indicators for rights-based development also involves measuring subjective elements, such as levels of public confidence in institutions of governance, including among people suffering from discrimination. Finally, process indicators are required to measure the application of the human rights principles of participation, equality and non discrimination and accountability in all phases of the programming cycle. 17

18 In the discussion, participants warned against the analytical confusion that may arise from too many surveys and studies produced by individual agencies as complementary UNCT-supported analytical work. Rather, emphasis should be on developing common data collection instruments (e.g. a multi-agency survey on access to justice) and a common database to foster a joint understanding of the issues by all agencies. Based on this common understanding, agencies could then apply their own perspective to how these issues might be addressed. Moreover, existing data sources should be exhausted first: dirty indicators get cleaner through use therefore UN agencies and national partners should start by digging through the vast amount of data in the national administrative data system that has not been mined yet. VI. Future directions for the Governance Indicators Project VI.1 OGC s resources and services The reference in UNDP s new strategic plan ( ) to governance assessments as a corporate priority for UNDP represents a threshold for the Governance Indicators Project. What type of support do CO staff need from OGC to enable them to assist national partners in conducting a governance assessment and/or in building an effective monitoring system for the national development plan? A brief overview of the assistance currently provided by the Project to UNDP COs was provided: (i) assistance to develop the capacities of national stakeholders (government, CSOs, media, civil society) in the use and development of governance indicators, (ii) assistance to facilitate processes for developing indicators around national development plans, and (iii) assistance to enhance existing and new governance indicators through a greater focus on poverty and gender disaggregation. OGC undertakes assessment and advisory missions to identify the issues, challenges and opportunities in developing an indicator system around the national development plan. The project also helps to mobilize resources and expertise to help build a national monitoring system. The UNDP Regional Centre in Bangkok is the first point of contact for advice and support to Country Offices in the Asia-Pacific region in the area of governance assessments. OGC works with Regional Centres in Bangkok, Colombo and Fiji to connect with Country Offices and country-level partners at national and sub-national levels. This cooperation enhances the reach of OGC s services, and enables OGC s initiatives to be tailored according to specific needs and contexts in the countries of the region. It also taps the vast experience of policy and programme specialists at the centres, who collectively have expertise in all aspects of democratic governance and related issues, and in-depth knowledge of the 25 programme countries in this diverse region. VI.2 Specific requests and suggestions for additional support In general, participants expressed strong interest in the services offered by OGC and confirmed there was a real and growing need for them. A suggestion was made to tailor the tools and framework presented in this workshop to the Asian context. For instance, it might be challenging to measure issues related to behavioral and 18