Responsive Local Governance (RLG) Activity

The purpose of the new RLG activity is to support LEGI in improving its planning and responsiveness to the concerns and public and private service delivery needs of their communities, making sure no group is excluded. With the new LG activity, USAID will support an inclusive and localized approach to ensure citizen accountability. Activity Goal: More effective and responsive local governance and practices. Activity Objective: To develop LEGIs as an effective, responsive, inclusive, and accountable institution to address social issues and provide quality basic services to the most marginalized. Intermediate Result-1: Strengthened LEGI capacity to be more transparent and accountable to the community and to monitor the quality of public and private services: Under this IR, the RLG activity will develop tools and practices that enable local systems to become more accountable, gender-sensitive, effective, and responsive institutions. For sustainability, RLG will work closely with the National Institution of Local Government (NILG) to incorporate successful training interventions in their curriculum (more will be explored in the LG Assessment for sustainability). Under this IR, the activity will support policy advocacy by LEGIs to encourage the national government to adopt legal and policy reforms to expand roles, authorities, and resource allocations for local governments so that they can improve service delivery by the cognizant offices. RLG will make efforts to promote e-governance practices within the LEGI and also to make them instrumental for overall e-governance practices at the community level. Through this IR, USAID intends to work with relevant local government actors to refine and institutionalize participatory practices in annual planning and budgeting for their areas. Intermediate Result-2: Improved civil society, community-based organization, and citizen participation in local decision-making and in monitoring public service delivery, including those contracted out to the private sector: This IR will work on citizen participation in local decision-making by developing Citizens Forums, including training and technical assistance to enhance the forums ability to play an effective and active role in public management oversight. The training will include immediate and ongoing opportunities over an extended period of time for participants to practice and apply their new knowledge, skills, and tools to their participation in local governance, with accompanying coaching by the RLG activity. The LG Assessment will explore existing Citizen Forums at the community level and recommend if those can be included in the RLG activity. Through the existing forums or new forums, the activity will prepare the community to participate in the annual planning and budget session and at the same time strengthen their advocacy capacity for better services. Illustrative interventions: Intermediate Result-3: Strengthened LEGI-private-sector-civil society organization (CSO) coordination to improve the quality of public and private services: Coordination among central government (both field administration and service delivery offices), CSOs and the LEGIs are crucial to ensure optimal governance at the local level. Recent studies[1] indicate that NGOs have crucial roles in improving local governance, especially during the post-pandemic era. Both LEGIs and CSOs/CBOs work very closely with citizens and, with support, can form a tight alliance to advocate for better services for the community. In doing so, this activity will strongly encourage civil society and LEGI to partner with the private sector for improving service delivery.