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Enhancing Citizens' Role in Service Delivery Improvement

The seminar provided the opportunity to learn from civil society's perspectives and experiences in working with local governments to improve pro-poor service delivery. The Public Affairs Centre in Bangalore, Sevanatha Urban Resource Center in Colombo, and Naga City People's Council shared their experiences in how their participation and contribution evolved to improve services in these cities.

The common threads and key messages of these cases are:

Relationships Managing relationships between elected officials and civil society, and between the people and civil society is quite a challenge.
Roles Civil society organizations (CSOs) can play a number of roles (e.g., represent the poor, provide services to the poor, provide services to the government). The challenge they have is how to maintain their independence and not be seen as an arm of government.
Rights Local government often controls social and infrastructure services and even decisions on the access to land. In this situation, how can the poor exercise their rights and what role do CSOs have in promoting a rights-based approach to services and assets for poor people?
Responsibilities CSOs have a major responsibility for being ethical, credible, and professional. Otherwise, they can lose the trust of the people and local government.
Rules Written and unwritten rules influenced by central/local relationships, legal exclusions, weak information and management can exclude and even harm the poor. CSOs need to be smart and persistent to understand these rules and become the voice of the poor when these rules work against the interests of the people.
Partnerships Partnership working is potentially a powerful tool for tackling difficult policy and operational problems that local governments face. It can also be a productive way of achieving more efficient and effective use of scarce resources. In these cases, we have examples where CSOs work with government or with other CSOs.
Participation Participation for empowerment has the potential of inserting poor people in the decision-making processes of government, in determining priorities, and in monitoring. For participation to generate positive outcomes to the poor requires devolution of resources and decision-making powers to local government, as well as explicit measures to include the poor. Process An earlier case referred to a quote that forming institutions was not a science but more of an art. This requires more attention being paid to the process by which these are formed and the manner in which the process is influenced by the local context.
Political systems The design of political systems affects access to the poor. These often do not match the way the poor are organized. How can CSOs influence changes to or work with existing political systems to ensure access is given to the poor?
Policies CSOs have shaped local government policies, which have led to improved services to the poor, and have implemented local government policy as well. How do CSOs maintain their integrity in this?

Holding the State to Account: Citizens Voice Through Report Cards in Bangalore

This case study provides readers with an overview of how three Citizen Report Cards have helped citizens of Bangalore engage with the city government and catalyze improvements in service delivery. More important, this experience offers insights on how local governments work with civil society and facilitate a well-grounded effort at reform of service delivery. The Bangalore experience has been replicated in several cities across India and in various countries such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Philippines, and Ukraine.

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Role of Civil Society Organizations in Promoting Responsive and Accountable Local Government for Improved Service Delivery in Colombo

This study focuses on the roles that an NGO can play in developing participatory survey tools in the promotion of responsive and accountable local government for improved service delivery, based on the SEVANATHA experience in Colombo. SEVANATHA, an NGO working as an intermediary on community organization and urban livelihood development with Colombo Municipality, developed a participatory survey tool called Report Card for identifying urban poor settlements in the city and analyzing the poverty situation of each. Municipal officials have effectively responded to the Report Card findings as communities have highlighted issues related to the municipal service delivery.

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People's Participation in Governance (Naga)

The case study presents the beginnings and gains of the Naga City People’s Council (NCPC), the network of accredited non-government and people’s organizations, in partnering with the City Government of Naga towards a transparent, participatory, and efficient governance and service delivery. The study also introduces the avenues made available for people participation, including those instituted for direct sectoral engagement, where the representatives of the marginalized sectors were able to influence the City Government’s policy-formulation, project implementation, and monitoring.

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