Blog Archive - Page 82 of 130 - Accountability Initiative: Responsive Governance

Linking outlays to outcomes in Education

By 2009, India has succeeded in enrolling 95% of all children in the elementary school going age into school. This is an impressive achievement. Thanks to a decent rate of growth and political commitment to address poverty, overall expenditures on programs like Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan have been increasing. There is today a government primary school within one kilometre of almost every habitation in the country. The education cess was introduced about six years ago. People paid up willingly. Overall, this has been a good decade for elementary education in India.

Around 2004-2005, the then newly elected government made statements about the importance of linking outlays to outcomes. This was an important policy stance for India given that large outlays were being made in the social sector and that effective delivery of basic social services was a high priority for the new government. But accompanying these policy statements, there was no effort made by the government to make information available to the public to enable citizens to link outlays to outcomes. So the question is, with increases in allocation; by building schools in every habitation and by enrolling our children into schools, have we achieved the desired outcomes?

The first ASER – the Annual Status of Education Report was born in 2005 in this context. People wanted to take a look themselves to see what the status of children’s education was – and see what the “aser” was of the outlays in elementary education. In ASER for the first time, in each rural district in the country, local groups began to visit villages and talk to families and children. Hundreds and thousands of children were given a simple paragraph and asked to read. They were given simple arithmetic problems and asked to solve them. As a country we listened to them as they read or they tried to read. Putting together the data for all rural districts we came to the conclusion that only half of all children in Std 5 could comfortably read Std 2 level text.

The ability of children to do simple arithmetic tasks was even worse. This meant that after 5 years in school, 50 percent of children in India were at the level expected after 2 years in school. Nationally, in five years, from 2005 to 2009 this trend has not changed much. Available information including findings from ASER brings out the basic characteristics of elementary education in rural India. Enrollment is very high. Schools are available within striking distance of most habitations in the country. So outlays are translating into inputs and infrastructure. But outlays do not seem to be going all the way to generating desired outcomes. At least as far as learning outcomes are concerned, the level is inadequate and the pace unsatisfactory. Children learn slowly. For many it is too late to have a fighting chance of completing eight years of schooling in a meaningful way. In many fundamental ways, the Indian school system is in a “big stuck”.

Where we are “stuck”? Children learn many things in many places and in many ways. However, one important and common site where children are expected to learn is in school. Regardless of language or context or location, we commonly expect that is a child goes to school, he or she will definitely learn reading and arithmetic. Teaching learning processes can be complex and difficult to measure. But for ordinary people who are paying taxes and cess, what are features of schools and school functioning that can be easily observed and tracked?

ASER makes basic observations in schools. But these observations have a difference. We do not just count teachers, we look to see if they are coming to school. We do not simply ask if there was midday meal in school, we observe to see if the midday meal has been served in school on the day of the visit. Similarly, we note not only if there are taps, handpumps and toilets, but also see if there is water in the taps that we can drink and toilets that are being used. A quick look at schools indicates that while many inputs are there, much more needs to be done to make the inputs useable and facilities function well.

In ASER 2009, a new component PAISA was introduced to understand money. Like the other components of ASER, the first step was at the ground level. In every sampled village in the country, a government primary school was visited. Questions were asked about how much money came to the school, when did it come and how was it spent. Interestingly, many teachers in schools did not know how much is to come and what they can do with it. The PAISA component of ASER is the first time a national attempt has been made to understand fund flows at the ground level.

ASER is a beginning. There are many challenges that lie ahead. The big question is: why are we in this “big stuck” and how can we get out it? To do this we need to understand the pathways by which allocations translate to action. We have to be able to track goals and their links to plans, decision making, allocations, expenditures to processes and outcomes. Each district in the country makes an annual work plan for elementary education. How do these plans define and articulate outcomes to be achieved? How much money is allocated to what? How does it flow and how is it spent? Does the level, type and pace of expenditure link with changes in outcomes? Not only are these questions important, but it is also essential to develop simple metrics and methods for measurement that can be used widely. We are hopeful that with each year, this citizens effort – ASER and PAISA – will go further and further in figuring out how to translate outlays to outcomes and how to bring our children to school and enable them to learn well.

Rukmini Banerji is Director, ASER Centre & Director, North India Programs, Pratham. The PAISA project is a collaboration between the Accountability Initiative, ASER Centre and National Institute for Public Finance Policy.

The long road to PAISA 2009

Do development funds reach India’s poor? Back in the mid 1980’s, then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi famously guesstimated that of every one rupee spent on development only 15 paise reach the poor. 25 years on, and despite significant increases in development funds, the story remains largely unchanged. Administrative inefficiencies, poor targeting, high implementation costs and leakages characterize the implementation of almost every development program and consequently only a small fraction of development funds end up reaching their final destination. This reality is perhaps the only point of consensus amongst India’s politicians, policy makers, bureaucrats and citizens. Although the problem is a well recognized one, there is surprisingly little data or analysis in the public domain on how development funds travel through the system and how much, in fact, reaches the poor. Even today, politicians and policy makers rely on guesstimates when they speak of problems with the country’s development funds. One primary reason for this lack of data is that the current administrative system is designed such that there are very few incentives in government to regularly analyze expenditures at the implementation level and even fewer to make this public. These limitations have seriously comprised accountability.

Take the instance of Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS) that now dominate social sector spending in the country. Funds for CSS are released by the Government of India (GOI) to State Governments and other implementing agencies. When GOI releases funds, it considers its job done and treats releases as expenditures. There is therefore, a disconnect between the release of funds and actual expenditures on the ground. As a 2007 Planning Commission Working Paper pointed out, “the connection between release of funds by the central government and actual expenditures for physical inputs by the implementing agencies is currently, very obscure.” In such a scenario, there are no incentives at the central government level to track expenditures to the point of implementation.

Interestingly, the Government of India’s budget documents do not even report on actual expenditures at the level of implementation. Data on expenditures can be found in the annual audited accounts of the Government but these have a two year time lag and are rarely available in the public domain. From time to time the Comptroller Auditor General (CAG) undertakes performance audits of CSS’s. Although these reports are publically available performance audits are sporadic and not done for all CSS’s. Importantly, even here disaggregated expenditure data is only available up to the district level and not below. In the last few years, the Government of India (and many state governments) has been working to put in place Management Information Systems (MIS) for many CSS that are aimed at making expenditure data available to the public in real time. However, as we discovered when we ploughed through these data bases, the quality of data is very poor and not regularly updated. Additionally, with a few exceptions, these data bases are not disaggregated below the district.

So where does all the money go? And as citizens of India, how can we find out and hold government accountable for this money? In early 2009, the Accountability Initiative, National Institute of Public Finance and ASER Centre joined hands to answer this question. Initial investigations resulted in the formulation of PAISA (Planning, Allocations and Expenditures, Institutions: Studies in Accountability), India’s first and only citizen led effort to track development fund flows at the point of implementation. To start, this exercise is focused on elementary education and more specifically the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA) but the intention is to expand this work to other development programs as the projects. PAISA’s specific point of investigation is the school grants in SSA2. School grants account for less than 10 percent of total SSA allocation. Despite their small size, PAISA chose to focus its analysis on these grants for a variety of reasons.

By simply tracking fund flows for one financial year, PAISA could help identify the extent of the problem, and the kinds of bottlenecks schools encounter on a day to day basis.

First, school grants are the primary funds that reach the school bank accounts. Second, school grants are meant to be spent on school infrastructure and are thus critical to the day to day functioning of the school. And third, school grants are meant for all elementary schools in country. Tracking these grants would thus allow for cross statecomparisons.PAISA began its first round of investigations with a district wide study in Nalanda district, Bihar in March 2009. The survey was timed to catch the end of the financial year (the financial year closes on March 31st) to enable tracking and analysis of the progress of funds through the year. Data was collected from a sample of 100 schools in the district over a 3 day period. The results were unsurprising but shocking, nonetheless. Out of 100 schools sampled, nearly a quarter of the schools had not received SSA grants even at the close of the financial year. For those that had
received money, delays were common. Most schools reported receiving the first tranche of funds only in October- one semester in to the school year. Irrespective of when funds arrived, expenditures were incurred somewhere between January and March – the last semester of the school year. Grants reaching late and problems with the school bank account were the main reasons for delayed expenditures.

The Nalanda experience clearly highlighted that fund tracking at the school level is indeed possible and necessary. By simply tracking fund flows for one financial year, PAISA could help identify the extent of the problem, and the kinds of bottlenecks schools encounter on a day to day basis. The next step for PAISA was to experiment with taking the survey to a nationwide scale through ASER 2009. Simplicity is the key to a national level survey. To this end, efforts were made to convert the PAISA tool in to a simple, accessible and easy to use tool. The ASER survey is conducted by civil society groups across the country. Making PAISA the first and only citizens audit of public funds reaching elementary schools. The PAISA 2009 report is the outcome of this first-ever nationwide exercise.

The PAISA survey aims to answer the following questions:
(a) Does money reach schools? i.e. do schools get their grants?

(b) If so, when do schools get their money? i.e. do grants arrive on time?

(d) How much information do key stakeholders – headmasters, regular teachers or para teachers – have about monies that reach the school?

(e) Do schools spend their money?

(f) What is the outcome of this expenditure?

The PAISA survey covered a total of 14,560 primary and upper primary schools. Of these only 1405 schools did not provide surveyors with any information on school grants which is less than 10 percent of the total sample. The survey results at the aggregate, national level highlights some interesting truths:

(a) Schools receive their grants but rarely on time: More than two-thirds of all schools surveyed reported receiving grants in the full financial year from April 2008 to March 2009. Among the three, more schools reported receiving the TLM grant (which goes directly to teachers) than the other two. But grants do not arrive on time. When the survey was conducted in
October 2009, at least 40% of schools had not received grants for the financial year 2009. Less than half of upper primary schools reported receiving the SMG and SDG in the first half of the financial year 2009-10.

(b) Even when money reaches schools, they do not always get their full entitlement: 45% schools reported receiving all the three mandatory grants in 2008-09. 20% did not receive any grant. 35% schools reported receiving one or two grants, but not all. One possible reason for this result could be the fact that respondents are not aware of the different types of
grants that school received and reported them as one consolidated figure.

(c) Not everyone knows about money in schools: PAISA found that Headmasters have the most knowledge about grants. In over 90% of schools surveyed, the regular teacher and the para teacher also have at least some information. However, their level of knowledge regarding the type of grant, amount of the grant and whether it has been received and spent vary
substantially.

(d) Money gets spent but in the last quarter of the financial year: The good news is that if and when schools receive their money they spend it. In 90% of the cases, schools reported that they were able to spend the money. However, this expenditure is normally in the last quarter of the financial year when the pressure to spend is very strong.

(e) Money gets spent but not always effectively: In terms of outcomes, on the positive side, over 80 percent of classrooms have a writeable blackboard and some form of charts, posters and other educational materials. However, less than half of the schools that reported receiving school maintenance and development grants had usable toilets, and more than 20 percent did not have a working hand pump. More than a quarter of schools that received the classroom grant in the financial year 2008-09 could not complete building it. In terms of physical infrastructure such as toilets, drinking water and civil works, therefore, the outcomes from the public expenditure elementary education are far from ideal.

So what does PAISA tells us? Money does reach but not entirely. Our calculations show that 85 % of grants reached
the schools out of the total amount that should have reached in accordance with school norms (n/b we arrived at this figure after minimizing reporting errors). Importantly, we found that even when funds reach their intended destination, delays are common indicative of deep-seated administrative malaise. And finally, there is the larger issue of how funds get used. PAISA suggests that there are significant gaps in the quality of expenditures. A finding that needs further analysis.

Collecting and analyzing data is a first crucial step. However, there remains the larger challenge of ensuring that data is used effectively both to unblock bottlenecks and to enforce accountability. PAISA is trying to do this in two ways. First it aims to provide data on implementation processes. Tracking fund flows is one way of doing this but going forward, PAISA will supplement this with an institutional analysis that will map administrative constraints and capabilities at the local level. Second, PAISA is trying to pro-actively feed data collected in to the local decision making process. To this end, PAISA has been involved in pilot efforts to disseminate information directly to Parent Teacher Associations and mobilize them to use tools and information to demand accountability for expenditures. Through this process it is hoped that information will also translate in to greater participation and therefore a more effective planning process, one that truly reflects people’s needs and demands.

So, where does PAISA go from here? After one long year of experimentation, PAISA is now set to expand is activities. The focus in the next two -three years will be on tracing funds from the district to the school to understand the entire chain of money as it flows through the system to reach its final destination. This it is hoped, will provide not just much needed data on money flows but also some insights in to the bottlenecks and administrative inefficiencies that have resulted in the current conundrum of increased allocations that never reach beneficiaries. This exercise will be undertaken in sample districts across the country. In addition, the annual ASER exercise will include a PAISA component where national level data on school expenditures will be collected. The key to PAISA is its simplicity, relevance and regularity. We aim to develop tools that can be used by anyone from experts sitting in Delhi to school committees in villages. To ensure relevance and regularity, we aim to produce our data in a manner that is understandable by stakeholders. In the long term
PAISA will expand beyond elementary education in an effort to develop innovative, practical and scaleable tools to track expenditures across all development programs and provide India with much needed data and tools to ensure that the government is accountable for all its development expenditures. Watch this space!

Yamini Aiyar is Director, Accountability Initiative, CPR. Anit Mukherjee is Associate Professor, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.

Learning to Complain

Honk…. Splash…. Flooding…. Crawl… Blank…..Neon amiss….Frustration…. Underlining despair… Belied…Forgotten.

These are just some of the sights and emotions that we all encounter the moment we step out of that little island of comfort we call home. Whether it’s the frustrating and wholly unforeseeable traffic jams or the debiliting condition of roads which lend a whole new meaning to the term wear and tear, or even the whimsical traffic light whose temperamental nature inspires a host of caricatures (or maybe that’s just me!).

Such conditions appear to surround us all, but how we have been shaped by it? If our surroundings are governed by chaos then what is it most suitably captures our mental state… apathy, frustration, confusion or just plain helplessness? My many musings have led me to conclude that while we might experience different shades of these emotions what we really are is incapacitated. We appear to lack the basic capacity/ability to act, to change the very situation we find ourselves in. Academics classify this as a lack of agency but in my opinion its not just agency that we lack-we are stuck in this state of impotence, in which we are fundamentally attuned to the belief that things cannot change. The system or the lack of one is assumed to be so much more powerful than the individuals who comprise it; is imagined that it will never bend to their will. So while the so called powerless sections in our societies (farmers in Uttar Pradesh, Tribal’s in Orissa) launch protest marches and clash with repressive forces in staking their claims – we the privileged educated class sit back, circumventing on most occasions any and every direct engagement with the powers that be.

Can we do something to demand what is classically and most nebulously defined as accountability? I believe we can.

But if we aren’t revelling in this situation then the question arises whether we can actually do something to change it? Can we do something to demand what is classically and most nebulously defined as accountability? I believe we can. I don’t say this because of my innate idealism but out of some amount of experience in trying a variety of strategies, which despite not being entirely successful have been instrumental in shaking off that feeling of utter inertia. I realize that a lot of the strategies that I have tried are not entirely revolutionary but sometimes even the most basic attempts can make a difference. So try the following when you find yourselves confronting the maddening and the inconceivable, even if it seems lame and entirely uninspiring.

1) Stuck in a frustrating traffic light- call the traffic police just dial 100 and report the place of the jam. I have tried this and some times it has yielded surprising results.

2) Traffic lights not working- call the traffic police in this situation as well. I have found them to be extremely polite on some occasions. Sometimes they are just as lost as us.

3) Dilapidated roads- File an RTI with the concerned authority. In Delhi you can file it with the Department of Road Transport and Highways, Ministry of Shipping Road Transport and Highways, or with the Urban Development Department of the Delhi government. This is extremely easy as it costs only Rs 10 and the RTI can be posted through speed post.

4) Garbage piling up on the streets- File a complaint with the designated MCD office, if that doesn’t work file an RTI on the status of your complaint.

Its time we learnt to complain!

Gayatri Sahgal is a Research Analyst with the Accountability Initaitive.

Data Matters: Linking Development Data to Government Performance

How come the government gets away with putting out data that is often inconsistent? How come our politicians get away without having to justify their ‘performance’ in any tangible way when they seek re-election?

Let us look at the two worlds — first, the world of government data: The data that government collects is mostly used for administrative reasons — tracking, checks and balances, etc. Most of this data is often locked up in files. There are often large variations in government data on the same parameter when accessed from two different sources within government. The Right to Information is an important tool to get data out, but the bottom line in the government is that there still remains an absence of a culture of openness.

Second, the world of our politicians. Politics anywhere is fiercely competitive. As we have seen over these past few days, it appears to be especially so in Karnataka! But the competition in our politics is a raw quest for power. And we all know there is something fundamentally wrong with this. What if we are able to get politicians to compete on real issues? What if they are forced to refer to facts and figures in specific terms when they reach out to the people for re-election?

The real challenge for us is to reach such data to citizens, NGOs, local journalists. Such data should become useful for all stakeholders to take up progress in the constituency using tangible data. And the MLA should defend his record of progress in various sectors during his tenure as MLA.

The work of IndiaGoverns really focuses on getting tangible data on performance as put out by government to matter to politicians and politics in the country.

As a starting point, we have taken the data from government sources in Karnataka at the local level, and organised it along MLA constituency boundaries. Based on this, we have prepared one page reports on Education Indicators, and have sent it to MLA in the state. (Please see http://www.indiagoverns.org/summaries/ to access the reports.) We have chosen data for education for a year which is even before this set of MLAs was elected in 2008. Our next report on education will be current, and will show the progress during his tenure.

The real challenge for us is to reach such data to citizens, NGOs, local journalists. And even to politicians in the state who have lost elections. Such data should become useful for all stakeholders to take up progress in the constituency using tangible data. And the MLA should defend his record of progress in various sectors during his tenure as MLA. Of course, the MLA can also use such data to ask for more government allocations if his constituency has a poor track record on any development issue. We are working on similar reports for health, water, etc.
We invite your suggestions, but also any concrete steps you can take in helping with dissemination of such information widely.

Veena Ramanna is the Executive Director of the IndiaGoverns Research Institute. You can find out more about the Institute’s work at http://www.indiagoverns.org/.

The RTI Act Turns 5

The cornerstone of the UPA government’s agenda when it was elected to government in 2004, the RTI Act celebrates its fifth birthday today, 12 October 2010. Some might say that five years is not a long time in the history of a law, but perhaps no other legislation has captured the imagination of the public in quite the way the RTI Act has. Today, the right to information or “Soochna Ka Adhikar” (as it popularly known) has made its way into the everyday lexicon of most Indians. A recent study conducted by RAAG (Right to Information Analysis and Assessment Group) estimates that some 2 million RTIs were filed across the country in the first 3 years after the Act was passed (RaaG, 2009). That’s a lot of RTIs! People have filed RTIs to redress individual grievances, probe government policies and decisions, expose corruption and misuse of government resources and access their basic entitlements whether its ration cards, wage payments or driver’s licenses. At the Accountability Initiative we’ve used the RTI extensively to get budget and expenditure related data on centrally sponsored schemes and to get information on how department’s are complying with the RTI. We are also currently undertaking a small research study on the kinds of information people are seeking under the Act. We hope this analysis will help in identifying people’s information needs and assist departments in responding to these needs proactively.

The RTI Act is a powerful tool which if used effectively can help bring in greater transparency and accountability in the functioning of government. But, the Act’s five year journey has not been without incident. As early as 2006, the government made attempts at trying to amend the RTI Act to exclude key provisions from public access. Though civil society groups successfully stalled such efforts to amend the Act, the issue is still very much alive. The Department of Personnel and Training (the nodal agency implementing the RTI Act) in recent months has confirmed that the government is considering amending the law to exempt “file notings” and “frivolous and vexatious” requests for information. Sources within the government state the amendments are necessary since departments cannot cope with the growing volume of RTI requests they are receiving. However this has more to do with the lack of adequate infrastructure and human resources in departments.

Citizens file RTI requests with government departments who are obligated to provide this information within a particular time frame. But this service delivery system is only as good or as efficient as the different links in the assembly chain.

Amendments to the RTI have not been the only roadblock on the Act’s journey. In recent weeks, RTI activists have questioned the lack of transparency in the selection and appointment procedures of Information Commissioners in the country. The recent appointment of AN Tiwari to the post of Chief Central Information Commissioner following the retirement of former Chief CIC Wajahat Habibullah has been severely criticized not only because Mr Tiwari is shortly set to retire in December but more so because the post of the Chief Information Commissioner is not intended to be a promotion post for other commissioners within the department. In other states as well, Information Commissions have increasingly become post-retirement hotspots for bureaucrats. The lack of transparency in the procedure for selecting information commissioners is a worrying trend and threatens to undermine the efficacy of an institution set up to champion and defend the RTI Act.

At yet another level, governments at various levels face a number of challenges in implementing the RTI effectively. Over the past few months, I’ve interacted with officials implementing the RTI Act in different departments in the Central government and Delhi government. Across the board they have the same stories to tell: departments lack the infrastructure, staff and often even space to effectively implement the RTI Act. Public Information Officers are overburdened and have little training on how to respond to RTI requests and receive little support from senior officials. The poor state of government records makes responding to RTIs a difficult and cumbersome task. These factors combined mean that government compliance with the RTI Act at various levels remains patchy, uneven and often half-hearted. While the officials I’ve interacted with have all unanimously agreed that the RTI Act is a welcome change, the general picture that seems to be emerging is that departments at various levels have not set in place the administrative machinery and infrastructure to effectively and efficiently implement the RTI Act.

The way I see it, the RTI is like any other service delivery system except that information is the key public good being provided. Citizens file RTI requests with government departments who are obligated to provide this information within a particular time frame. But this service delivery system is only as good or as efficient as the different links in the assembly chain. It’s really quite simple. What do you get when you have departments that are overburdened and undertrained with limited access to resources? A system which is basically inefficient and unresponsive. Evidence of this non-responsiveness is there for all of us to see in the growing pendency rate of complaints and appeals in Information Commissions across the country. If cases are likely to take up to a year or more to be heard, people are going to lose faith in the system and the RTI Act more generally.

Amending the RTI Act is merely a stop gap measure aimed at pacifying certain key factions within the bureaucracy and will not address the serious implementation issues cropping up. The real need of the hour is for governments at various levels to seriously commit themselves to implementing the Act more efficiently. As they say, where there is a will there is a way.

Mandakini is a Research Analyst with the Accountability Initiative.

CPWD, PWD, NDMC, DJB – Multiple agencies but no accountability!

Every year it’s the same story. The monsoons hit Delhi and life in the city comes to a grinding halt. For a city that so craves the rain every summer we are remarkably unprepared for it. Traffic snarls, blocked drains, flooded roads, power outages and road collapses make for an unpleasant experience. Couple these with the inevitable dengue, malaria and viral fever outbreaks and you’re in for a pretty rotten monsoon. And then there’s the Commonwealth Games…well I think enough’s been said on that front. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little tired of the déjà vu. I mean we all know the score. Delhi + Monsoons X Flooding, Road Cave-ins, Disease etc = Chaos. Check. Okay so maybe we had record rainfall this year and the Yamuna is flowing at an all time high, but still, shouldn’t government agencies at various levels be prepared for this?

The problem isn’t so much with the rain as it is with the structure of municipal governance in the city.

Multiple agencies: Mind bogglingly, Delhi has over a 100 civic agencies tasked with overseeing municipal services such as land usage, roads, transport, water, electricity, sewage and flood control etc. These agencies include the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), the Delhi Cantonment Board (DCB), Delhi Jal Board, Delhi Development Authority, Central Public Works Department (CPWD), Public Works Department (PWD) etc. What makes things even more complicated is the fact that these agencies report to different ministries and departments.

Dual Jurisdiction: Unlike other metropolitan cities in the country, Delhi has the dubious distinction of being the seat of both the Union Government and the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD). In practice this makes for a pretty complicated administrative set-up with some parts of the city under the administration of Central Government agencies and others under the Delhi government. So while agencies such as the MCD, DDA, Delhi Police and CPWD are answerable and accountable to the Central Government, the PWD, DJB and Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) report to the Delhi Government. This makes for confusing and parallel structures of governance where it’s unclear where the jurisdiction of one government starts and the other ends. This duality has for long been exploited by various agencies to pass the buck.

Overlapping responsibilities: It’s often said that too many cooks spoil the broth and it couldn’t be truer than in Delhi. From water, public works, sanitation, land, you can be pretty sure there’s more than one civic agency involved. Here’s a quick snapshot of the extent to which this is true.

Civic Agencies providing basic services in Delhi

Service

Urban Planning & Development

Roads

Water & Sanitation

Land

(Residential & Industrial)

Departments Responsible

DDA

MCD

NDMC

CPWD

PWD

MCD

NDMC

Cantt. Board DDA etc.

Delhi Jal Board

MCD

DDA

NDMC

DDA

CPWD

L&DO

DSIDC Govt of Delhi

MCD

NDMC

Cantt Board.

No answerability or accountability: What do you get when you have multiple agencies responsible for the same services and reporting to different departments? No answerability and no accountability. The current CWG fiasco is a prime example where each agency blames the other. So we have PWD faulting the quality of CPWD construction work and the NDMC complaining the MCD isn’t doing what it should to keep the city free of dengue and malaria. As agencies play pass the parcel, Delhi’s residents are left wondering who to hold responsible.

Theory suggests that strengthening accountability relationships between citizens, service providers and policy makers is critical to ensuring the effective delivery of services. But that can be hard to do when there just is not enough information available about who’s supposed to do what. So if you’re not sure who is responsible for road construction and maintenance in your neighbourhood, it’s not going to be easy to pin them down and hold them accountable. Thus, in the context of public service delivery, access to better information is increasingly regarded as a key step towards strengthening citizen claims of accountability on service providers and policymakers (World Development Report 2004,Making Services Work for Poor People).

The RTI Act instrumentalises this approach by requiring all public authorities to proactively disclose 17 categories of basic information on their websites and through other means. This includes information about their organisational structures, budget, directory of officials, projects, annual plans etc. In practice this means agencies such as the MCD, PWD, NDMC, CPWD etc should be disclosing proactively information about the various public works that they are involved with on a regular basis. Sadly, Section 4 disclosure continues to be poorly implemented by most of these agencies. Scroll through their websites and the information you’re likely to find the information is usually out of date. Ensuring better and more effective information disclosure by municipal agencies is one way of ensuring that agencies perform the functions they are supposed to. The Central Information Commission has been pushing for stronger implementation of Section 4 of the RTI Act for the last few months with interesting results. It recently issued orders to municipal agencies in Delhi to disclose detailed information on the contracts issued to consultants for projects under the Commonwealth Games. In a rare instance, the NDMC has complied with the CIC’s orders and put up a detailed list of consultants hired to carry out CWG work (click here to read the information disclosed by the NDMC).

There is clearly a need for broader municipal reforms in Delhi to streamline the provisioning of services and responsibilities of agencies. But as is the case with all major governance reforms – that’s likely to take a while! In the meantime, pushing for better information disclosure by municipal agencies may be one way of bringing in greater accountability and transparency.

Mandakini Devasher is a Research Analyst with the Accountability Initiative.

Budget Manual released by Ministry of Finance

The Budget Division of the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, has released a Budget Manual. This is a first of its’ kind document that is expected to serve as a reference material not only to the officers involved in the Budget process but other users and interested stakeholders as well.

The Budget Manual is a comprehensive document which captures the content of the Union Budget as well as the procedures and activities connected with the preparation of the Annual Budget. The processes and guidelines have been simplified and put in a logical sequence for easy comprehension.

Click here to view the Budget Manual in .pdf form.

Right To Know Day, 2010: 5 Billion Now Have Right To Information

Over 90 countries representing nearly five billion people have now adopted laws or national regulations on RTI. However, over half the countries of the world have not yet adopted RTI laws and many that have done so have failed to implement them adequately. There have also been efforts in several countries to weaken laws.

ARTICLE 19 offices and staff are participating in events in eight countries including Bangladesh, Kenya and Mexico to celebrate Right to Know Day 2010 , and have issued a statement of some of the RTI advances and setbacks over the year:

RTI Advances
– New Laws and Recognition. The number of jurisdictions with RTI laws continued to grow. Over the past year, new laws were adopted in Liberia and Bermuda. Many others have improved their laws. In Australia, the archaic Freedom of Information Act, 1982 was substantially amended and improved. The Organization of American States adopted a model RTI bill for adoption across the Americas and the Caribbean. The adoption of related laws also continued to expand – in Uganda for example, a comprehensive whistleblowing law was adopted.

– Constitutional Rights. Increasingly, countries are including RTI in new constitutions. In the past year, the recently approved Kenyan constitution includes substantial RTI provisions while Article 19 of the Pakistani constitution was amended to include RTI. A decision in the Canadian Supreme Court fell short of fully endorsing RTI as a constitutional right. Now, over 80 countries recognised right to information as a constitutional right.

– New Bills. There are more efforts in countries around the world to consider RTI laws. In total, over 50 countries have proposals to adopt laws pending. Some of the more recent efforts include Argentina, Bhutan, Pakistan, Senegal, Sierre Leone, Spain, Ukraine, and the Malaysian state of Selangor.

– Environmental Information. The right to environmental information was strongly advanced as a global right during the last year. The UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) released new global guidelines for the development of national legislation on access to information, public participation and access to justice in environmental matters in June 2010. World leaders in December agreed to The Earth Summit 2012, which may lead to a new global treaty on access to environmental information.

– Open Data. Both the US and the UK governments launched new open data sites to make raw datasets of public information available for the first time. This allows for the public to do its own analysis of policies and expenditures. In the UK, this included detailed spending information.

– World Bank. The World Bank transparency policy released in December 2009 substantially improves the transparency of the Bank. While it is not perfect, there is hope that the policy will set the standard for other international financial institutions.

RTI Setbacks
– Stalled Campaigns. Legislation in Brazil and the Philippines reached the final steps but due to lack of political leadership, both failed at the last hurtle and will have to be reintroduced next year. Efforts in Yemen, Cambodia and Vietnam have also faltered due to lack of political will. There has been no repeal of the infamous Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act in Zimbabwe following the change in government there.

– National Security. New secrecy legislation proposed in South Africa in the last year would seriously undermine RTI. Anti-terrorism laws are repeatedly used to justify hiding public information and harassing the media.

– Failure to Implement. Many countries have adopted RTI laws over the last few years but have not seriously implemented them. The laws in Angola and Uganda have not been substantially implemented. There are continued efforts by government officials in India to amend the excellent Right to Information Act in order to weaken it.

– Development. The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) summit recognised the importance of transparency and the free flow of information as a central tool in promoting development and achieving the MDGs but failed to substantially include requirements for it in the action plan.

– Climate Change. Freedom of expression and access to information was severely limited at the failed Copenhagen Climate Change Summit. The resulting Copenhagen Accord failed to include substantial transparency rights essential to ensuing adequate public participation.

Debate on the UID: Share your views!

Accountability Intitative invites your views on the UID, on the brink of its first roll out in rural Maharashtra. We welcome comments on any aspect of the UID– its’ implementation, design, flaws, potential, constitutionality; as well as any relevant links or media you may wish to share.

The launch of the UID has led to a flurry of debate amongst policy-makers, legal experts and civil society at large; often surfacing in polarizing editorials and sometimes in press conferences calling for its’ halt. Today’s conference at the Press Club in Delhi was held by a coalition of civil society groups opposed to the UID, organized under the banner Campaign for No UID. The coalition asserts the project has been initiated without any prelude: “there is no project document; there is no feasibility study; there has been no cost-benefit analysis; there are serious concerns about data and identity theft… [the project] has proceeded so far without any legal authorization, on the basis of an executive order, that could change the status of the people in this country.”

Aadhaar will go beyond just providing “a 16-digit identification number for every Indian”. and is pitched to handle projects as diverse as a national-highway toll-collection system, a technology backbone for the forthcoming Goods and Services Tax (GST) and reform of the vast public distribution system(PDS) for subsidised food.

Nandan Nilekani, chief of Aadhaar, says the UID will “provide an identity to those who need it most”, and answers comprehensive questions in this interview on the benefits of the UID. However, others such as Jean Dreze, economist and NAC member, have claimed Aadhaar is “a national security project in the garb of a social policy initiative”. Inevitably there are concerns over privacy and data protection, with calls for a privacy Bill to counter the supposed legal and constitutional vacuum in which Aadhaar is currently placed, and predictably at least one writer has evoked Orwell. However, others claim the security provided to 600 million poor outweighs the philosophical and intellectual concerns over privacy that are limited to sections of liberal civil society. Critics also allege that the reason why Aadhaar is selling itself to millions of poor in the country is to create a foundation of legitimacy to deflect concerns over it being misused, technologically unproven and costly, as well as to piggyback on schemes like the NREGA and the PDS. The debate extends across citizen-State relations, privacy, finances, and operations.

Also, Aadhaar will go beyond just providing “a 16-digit identification number for every Indian”. and is pitched to handle projects as diverse as a national-highway toll-collection system, a technology backbone for the forthcoming Goods and Services Tax (GST) and reform of the vast public distribution system(PDS) for subsidised food. Nilekani runs a team of 120 people with the task of assigning unique identities to 1.2 billion people. These people form a small-smart-fast-flat team that runs Aadhaar. Is this model effective, and as some say an organisation that is a precursor to tomorrow’s government?

All comments will be moderated.