Table of contents executive summary 6

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This document was produced as a result of a comprehensive review of the implementation of the SNGP that was prepared in the second half of 2011 and was presented to donors in January 2012. For this review, IDLG’s Policy Directorate prepared a 64-point summary of the SNGP, and then worked with its directorates and partners to identify progress against each of the 64 points. Based on the implementation data thus generated, IDLG was able to identify clear lessons learned, and formulate recommendations for future implementation, covering the topics of how management of policy implementation can be improved, and how priorities can be identified: these proposals were endorsed with some additions and small modifications by donors and partners.

Based on the review process, IDLG determined that a part of the Policy should be recognized as a priority if it (i) had been a subject of significant effort prior to the review, (ii) it fell under an NPPLG deliverable, (iii) the objective or substance of the policy point had been identified as a priority for Transition. Based on these priorities, 34 of the 64 points of the point-by-point summary were identified as priorities. These were then re-organized into 5 thematic areas, as follows:

1. 
   Clarifying the basic functions and relationships of provincial and district entities;
   
2. 
   Making Provincial Governors’ Offices more effective organizations;
   
3. 
   Building the institutions for planning and implementing service delivery at provincial level;
   
4. 
   Increasing provincial-level accountability;
   
5. 
   Strengthening the municipal service delivery cycle.
   

To facilitate implementation of the Policy, this document presents an output for each of the five priority areas. The five outputs are divided into 4-6 sub-outputs, and for each sub-output a clear, specific practical and time-bound deliverable is identified. These deliverables include both “central level” deliverables such as manuals, agreements and processes, and “field level” deliverables such as workshops, public events and implementation support, most of which need to be provided to all Provincial Governors Offices, Provincial Municipalities and Provincial Councils. The document also clearly identifies internal and external implementation responsibility for all deliverables, as well as identifying category of the deliverable, e.g. whether it is deliverable related to Public Administration Reform, Budget Reform, Policy & Procedure, and so on. The underlying “model of change” for all of the activities is what is called the “develop, disseminate and support” model, under which IDLG and its partners define expected systems or behavior at the subnational level, clearly disseminate information and guidance on the systems, and then provide field support to ensure that it is adopted. This model applies across many types of interventions including clarifying relationships between local actors, implementing improved financial practices and supporting organizational development for Governors’ Offices and other SNG units.

In addition to a high level of clarity about the specific deliverables needed to implement SNGP priorities, this document also proposes practical management arrangements for policy implementation. The premise of the approach is that IDLG, with some targeted technical assistance, can produce most ‘central level’ deliverables such as procedures and agreements. However, due to the sheer number of SNG units nationwide and the number of activities and events that are needed to ensure adoption of new systems and new behavior, IDLG cannot produce all ‘local level’ deliverables using its internal resources. Therefore, IDLG will rely on donor-funded projects and other external implementation mechanisms to produce these deliverables. The document puts forward a clear and simple management model based on this premise: in each planning period, the Policy Directorate communicates the planned deliverables for the upcoming period to the implementing Directorates of IDLG; the implementing Directorates either assign responsibility for deliverables to their own teams and sub-units, or negotiate with donor-funded projects to ensure that the deliverables will be produced in each SNG unit as planned; the Directorates then track the production of deliverables as planned and agreed, e.g. verifying that all the expected workshops and public events in each province are being delivered, and then report implementation to the Policy Directorate and the M&E Directorate; consolidated reporting is then generated and shared with appropriate stakeholders. This management arrangement makes it plausible that the outputs and deliverables identified in the framework actually can be implemented, provided donor-funded projects are able to align their activities with the content of the framework. It therefore depends on a very high level of collaboration with donors and implementing partners.

The outputs and deliverables of the framework are based on the model of Subnational Governance that runs through most of the main Subnational Governance Policy Document: the system in which provinces and district are administrative units but not political units, government offices in the provinces and districts are “branch offices” of central agencies, and the subnational governance units (Governors’ Offices, Provincial Councils and Local Municipalities) serve the purpose of adding local decision-making and accountability to what would otherwise be a fully centralized system. The policy and the implementation framework are therefore conservative in the sense that no fundamental changes to the existing system are proposed: all outputs and deliverables have the underlying objective of making the existing system work, rather than fundamentally changing it.