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Making Devolution Work for Service Delivery in Kenya
finances, and decision-making. They also need this information in formats that are accessible, timely, and relevant to citizens’ needs and priorities. • The second element relates to citizen participation in decision-making and service delivery oversight. Citizens need opportunities to participate in decision-making, articulate their needs and priorities, and provide feedback on service delivery outputs and quality. • The third element relates to accountability. Ultimately county governments and frontline service providers will respond to citizen priorities and feedback if citizens have meaningful opportunities to hold them to account for their decisions and actions, as well as for their lack of action. These three core elements underpin a virtuous cycle of strengthened citizen engagement and improved service delivery (figure 6.1). Transparency. Transparent information across the full cycle of planning, budgeting, and implementation, as well as basic information about citizen rights and service delivery standards, is critical to meaningful and effective citizen engagement. This includes information about government plans, budget allocation, fiscal transfers, and service rules and standards, as well as comparative service access and quality metrics. Transparency and the requirement to regularly publish information on government programs, finances, and performance is usually mandated in legal provisions (such as public financial management [PFM] laws) and in sectoral legislation (such as the Water Act or local government regulations). However, rules and regulations about information transparency are rarely sufficient in themselves in ensuring that citizens have adequate access to information about service delivery. National and local governments also require systems and the technical capacity to systematically collect and distribute this information in formats that are accessible, comprehensible, and timely. It is often also critical to incentivize compliance by linking the collection and publication of information to fiscal transfers and the annual budget cycle. Civil society and other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—such as think tanks, the media, and academia—often play important intermediary roles in analyzing and presenting data in forms that are relevant and salient to ordinary citizens. FIGURE 6.1
Elements of social accountability systems Government
Transparency: information for citizens
Accountability
Citizens
Source: World Bank 2012.
Participation and feedback: information from citizens
