regional workshop on cdd and institutional sustainability_roundtable discussion notes_22 june...

8/2/2019 Regional Workshop on CDD and Institutional Sustainability_Roundtable Discussion Notes_22 June 2011_Jakarta

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ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION1 NOTES

TOPIC: Opportunities and Challenges in Supporting Citizen Participation and

Promoting Financial Sustainability of Local Services and Infrastructure

Citizen Participation in Local Service Delivery

1. The biggest opportunity in supporting citizen participation is the strong support ofgovernments for good governance as a key element of poverty reduction, as well as presence

of a national policy for CDD. The availability of participatory mechanisms, techniques, and tools

that are easily accessible with the help of information technology, also poses a good opportunity

for promoting citizen participation. Various knowledge sharing activities are useful for learning

good practices and lessons that can potentially improve CDD project design and

implementation.

2. There is increasing need for capable community facilitators to drive citizen participation

particularly in the early stages of CDD projects. To enhance the capacity and ensure continuity

of service of community facilitators, there is a need to review and consolidate capacity building

efforts and learning environment such as the CDD training and courses offered by various

NGOs and academic institutions. It is also important that government support them to keep their

commitment to the community not only by strengthening their roles but also by improving their

lives.

3. CDD project inherently intends to have the principles of participation, transparency and

accountability become part of village governance by transferring the technology to community

facilitators and having these pursued throughout the CDD life cycle. The role of facilitators is to

develop grassroots leaders to get them to practice and sustain participatory governance beyond

project life. Ideally, there is no longer funding for community facilitators beyond the project life

because the assumption is that they had facilitated the integration of participatory governance inlocal development processes by the time the project ends. This should be considered the

ultimate objective of an exit strategy normally formulated at the onset of a CDD project in a

community. While there is expectation that the CDD approach embeds participatory

1 Held in Jakarta on 22 June 2011 (9:00a.m.-10:00a.m.) as a segment of the Regional Workshop on CDD and Institutional

Sustainability in Asia. Participants were Ms. Maria Loreto Padua, KALAHI-CIDSS Task Team Leader, World Bank Manila; Mr.Edward Abdurrahman, Ministry of Public Works, Indonesia; Mr. Asep Suryahadi, Director, The SMERU Research Institute,Indonesia; and, Mr. Edgar Pato, KALAHI-CIDSS National Project Manager, Department of Social Welfare and Development,Philippines. Ms.Sri Wening Handayani, Principal Social Development Specialist, ADB, was the moderator.


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governance, more follow-up is needed to ensure the integration and sustainability of

participatory governance in local development processes.

4. There is a need to continue consolidating citizens movements in order that they can

engender power, considering the temporary status of community leaders serving as village

volunteers. This consolidation is necessary so that community volunteers can participate in thebigger arena of development, not only to influence local sub-projects but also to mobilize

resources and eventually, move towards influencing the national policy. A broader concern is

how various CDD experiences (such as the experiences of Saemaul Undung, KALAHI-CIDSS

and PNPM) could be consolidated to influence the enabling environment in order that CDD will

drive national development. CDD would be more successful if it is ultimately used as a strategy

for national development rather than implemented as a program with external funding support.

Advocacy and actual practice of participatory process are important to support CDD and these

can start with educating children on citizen participation and applying CDD concepts at the

institutional/ organizational level.

5. The devolution of service delivery to local governments presents an opportunity for

citizen participation particularly in planning, decision making and budgeting. Community leaders

are mandated to represent their respective communities in local development councils, which

promote participation in local development processes. However, the quality of their participation

needs to be examined in terms of the manner and extent they can influence decision making. In

addition, local governments may have varying capacities and receptiveness in adopting

participatory processes. It is important to have resource mobilization mechanism and effective

service delivery to encourage communities to initiate development projects with available means

of financing. It may be noted that community participation may not be sustained after a foreign-

funded project ends given that certain systems and procedures (such as direct fund

disbursement to communities and community-based procurement) may no longer be applicable.

6. CDD can be viewed as part of Indonesias democratization process as the country shifts

from autocratic to democratic governance. It fits well with decentralization where people have

more control over development efforts that affect their lives. CDD in the country is supported by

a national policy, a good opportunity to develop the approach further. It builds the capacity of

communities to build simple infrastructure projects of good quality. Citizen participation,

however, is affected by the imbalance in local power structure where the elite control the

decision-making process while the poor disproportionately carry the burden of physical work

during subproject construction. Also, the poor receive lower wages from these subprojects in

order that the community can raise its counterpart contribution. In Asia, including Indonesia, the

biased perception on gender roles often inhibits womens participation and incorporation of

womens needs in CDD projects. Future CDD projects should carefully address these

challenges.

Financial Sustainability of Local Services and Infrastructure

7. One of the opportunities in promoting financial sustainability is that CDD inherently

develops the capacity of community leaders to mobilize resources and encourages local


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government units and national government agencies to share resources to support community

subprojects. For instance, KALAHI CIDSS offers the communities training on not only on

mobilizing financial resources but also technical resources such as how to invite local

government engineers to train the community volunteers on how to prepare technically sound

projects. Along with the opportunities are challenges such as difficulty to have financially sound

operations and maintain bigger type of subprojects such as water systems and road projects.As it is difficult to push the imposition of user fees enough to maintain a subproject, operations

and maintenance are usually relegated to the local government units. In addition, a lot of

KALAHI-CIDSS areas are poor and no amount of good capacity building on resource

mobilization will be enough to draw in financial support for operations and maintenance in these

areas. It is important to increase their capacity to mobilize resources from other sources to help

in the operation, sustainability and maintenance of community subprojects.

8. In Philippines, local governments have an opportunity to utilize capital market financing

or may engage in borrowing from financial institutions. It is important that they establish a good

track record to be able to continually avail of financing services to fund their development

projects. A good practice for instance is the introduction of development market place, a

scheme where communities and local governments literally market their development proposals

to different funding entities (both local and international). This scheme encourages local

governments to formulate financing policies that are receptive to the engagement of

communities. Meanwhile, financial sustainability of local services may be affected by the

dependence of local governments on internal revenue allotment (IRA) and by the limited IRA

amount in light of rising demand for basic social services. To ensure financial sustainability of

subprojects, community groups are required by KALAHI-CIDSS to develop operations and

maintenance (O&M) plans that indicate strategies on how best to sustain subprojects such as

generating income stream, ensuring sufficient funds from local sources, and imposition of tariffs

or user fees. An O&M plan is required at the onset of project implementation.

9. Some studies in Indonesia found that communities are willing to pay to sustain local

services especially when projects directly benefit them. Financial sustainability is a function of

social sustainability. When people participate, they expect better outcome which, if achieved,

allows financial sustainability of local services. Financial sustainability however is affected by

low fiscal capacity in most regions in Indonesia. There exists also a decoupling of community

planning and budgeting, the latter being a domain of regional government offices. Plans are

well laid out but there is no budget to implement them. This results in some kind of

musrembang fatigue in the community wherein people become tired of the approach due to

lack of budget to implement projects they have planned. The situation is sometimes

exacerbated by the presence of some self-help groups that are not quite motivated to assist

community members in subproject implementation. Donors should ensure that their projects

have a clear exit strategy to achieve social and financial sustainability.

10. Districts should be more concerned about their respective communities that are willing to

implement foreign-funded projects. In these districts, communities should be provided with

facilitators and capacity building to enable them to identify and mobilize financial and technical

resources. However, the problem is lack of readiness or the varying capacities of districts to


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mobilize resources. Public-private partnership and willingness of communities to pay are seen

as opportunities to sustain local services and infrastructure.

11. Financial sustainability requires empowerment of communities in order that they can

bring in the private sector without relying so much on government resources. A manual for

formulating community investment plan that clearly incorporates the process of participatoryplanning, decision making, project implementation and monitoring and evaluation, may be

developed and offered to local governments to encourage collaboration of public and private

sectors, which can contribute in enhancing financial sustainability of local services.

Conclusion

12. Citizen participation in service delivery is a key element of CDD as it strengthens

ownership of subprojects, improves local accountability and transparency, and ensures the

quality, maintenance, and sustainability of services and infrastructures. It is better achieved

when government has a strong support for good governance and a national policy that

underpins CDD. Knowledge sharing and accessibility to available information on participatory

mechanism, tools and techniques increase knowledge that stakeholders can consider in

improving citizen participation during project design and implementation. The capacity of

community facilitators should be enhanced and continuity of their commitment ensured to

sustain participatory governance in the communities beyond project life. Issues on elite capture;

participation of the poor and women in CDD subprojects; and, readiness and varying capacities

of local governments, while these are context-specific, should be addressed carefully in CDD

projects or scaling up.

13. CDD offers opportunities for promoting financial sustainability of services and

infrastructures by training communities on financial and technical resource mobilization andrequiring communities to develop O&M plans at onset of the project. While some communities

are willing to pay for using infrastructures that directly benefit them, other communities find it

difficult to have financially sound operations and maintenance of infrastructure projects given

the difficulty of imposing user fees and limited development funds of communities. Thus,

communities and local governments have to increase their capacity to mobilize resources. This

is also in light of the disconnect between local planning and budgeting which results in non-

implementation of planned programs and projects. Donors should strictly enforce the

formulation of an exit strategy of subprojects. Finally, public-private partnership may be adopted

as a strategy to improve the sustainability of local services and infrastructure projects.

regional workshop on cdd and institutional sustainability_roundtable discussion notes_22 june...

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