International workshop Venice - March 11-12 1999 Concepts and Paradigms of Urban Management in the Context of Developing Countries
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Matteo Scaramella (Abaton srl)

"Notes about criteria for monitoring and evaluating programmes of decentralised co-operation between local governments"

From an experimental phase to the acquisition of sound concepts and of practical rules

Decentralised co-operation is not yet definitely on the way out of its experimental phase; however, the experiences carried out in the last years have by now allowed the elaboration of theoretical elements which can help in orienting practical action. The difficulty in identifying a corpus of definitions and of rules for the planning, implementation and evaluation of decentralised co-operation programmes and projects is probably due to an insufficient reflection about this specific aspect, rather than to the comparatively small number of cases to be studied.

This has often led promoters of decentralised co-operation programmes to reject the application of standard project management procedures, such as GOPP, ZOPP, Project Cycle Management, Logical Framework, considering them too rigid and not appropriate to the specific nature of this particular form of co-operation and of community-based projects. As a consequence, some of the supporters of decentralised co-operation have fought for its diffusion with the arms of declarations of principles, which are as true as unproved, rather than getting into the subject with analytic method and research spirit.

This is perfectly understandable, given the difficulties very often encountered by the actors in their practice for decentralised co-operation, and given the reluctant approach to decentralised co-operation that donors have shown, in their practical behaviour rather than in their official statements.

Exactly for these reasons, the need arises to define the concepts of decentralised co-operation in a non ideological way and to develop a methodology for action planning, implementation and evaluation. This will allow decentralised co-operation to express its tremendous potential and to show its results in an unequivocal, measurable and transmissible way.

If we analyse one of the more common statements supporting this form of co-operation: "decentralised co-operation allows the participation of citizens and of the civil society", we note that such statement can be absolutely true, but still there is a risk that it contains an ideological and superficial approach. It requires, in order to be convincing, that a number of conditions and requirements are identified and met. As everybody knows, most co-operation programmes between local governments (Med-Urbs, Asia-Urbs, Urbal, Ouverture, Interreg, Recite, etc) start from the co-operation between elected persons or civil servants of local councils; in order to really reach the civil society, this co-operation needs that many factors are there: the will, the ability, some equipment and, first of all, clear analyses of the context and a good understanding of the stakeholders.

Decentralised co-operation and local communities

When we speak of decentralised co-operation between local authorities, we mean, or we should mean, above all co-operation between local communities; what gives the character of community to a group of people who lives on the same territory or in the same town, is a kind of contract, more or less explicit and more or less respected, between three main groups of actors: the citizens, who accept to pay for the services, to contribute to the social life and to limit their personal freedom to follow the common rules; the members of the local government, elected by the citizens who expect from their action an improvement of their everyday life and of the infrastructure and services supporting their productive activities; and the civil servants, who should have specific know-how and use it to identify and to satisfy the needs of the citizens, performing as points of contact between citizens and their political representatives.

This is the general framework; variable elements are: the weight of central governments and the autonomy that they leave to local councils, the levels of awareness and of democracy in the relationships between the three groups of actors, the power of local bureaucracy, the presence of other strong powers, and the levels of corruption and criminality.

The results and the impact of the actions of decentralised co-operation

Therefore decentralised co-operation must be based on careful analyses of the context and of the structures, in order to identify properly the beneficiaries and the stimuli for some change.

Direct and indirect beneficiaries must be clearly identified; they are in general:

• civil servants and employees of local governments, members of trade unions, syndicates and of private and local professional associations, managers of NGOs, leaders of citizens associations, etc.: as a rule, all these ones are beneficiary of training actions and exchanges of experiences; ·
• the citizens of the local communities who take part to the project, who are supposed to be beneficiaries of the actions, in terms of improvement of the services, of promotion of democracy, and possibility of development. ·

beneficiaries of decentralised co-operation actions are therefore the citizens in their totality, whereas the direct (or intermediate) beneficiaries are managers, civil servants or representatives directly touched by the actions. To measure the success of a project or programme, we have to consider to what extent the actions result in concrete benefits for the target population.

The measurement of the results and the impact

Two key elements of the overall project cycle are the identification of the two categories of beneficiaries together with the mutual relations within the project, and the definition of actions' objectives. Decentralised co-operation cannot ignore the necessity of standard planning methods and criteria, without which is not possible to allow decisions to be taken at various levels. Although sometimes the standards commonly applied for "traditional" projects are too formal and scarcely useful for an efficient running of community-based programmes and projects, decentralised co-operation can contribute to the definition of new more efficient and adaptable planning criteria.

Monitoring and evaluation are also to take into consideration from the formulation of the projects; in this area traditional tools are particularly inadequate to take into fair consideration the actions, the results, and the impacts of the actions of decentralised co-operation. Yet it is essential to focus on some effective and appropriate evaluation tools, that have to be identified and agreed upon among the actors of the projects.

The following are some indicators, in various degree objectively measurable, related to urban communities development and management, proposed for the common reflection of the participants.

Overall objectives
Economic development	Number of firms, Volume of sales, Community financial resources, Community global budget, Investment budget.
Democracy	Number of elected bodies, Turnover of elected persons, Management of elected bodies, Grassroots democracy ( commissions, stakeholders committees, citizens associations… ).
Administrative Reforms	Transparency of procedures, Staff attitude towards public, Efficiency of the structure, Medium know how at each level of the structure.
Public/private relationship	Amount of contracted activities, Financial support and / or fiscal facilitation to firms, Directly run activities, Trend of municipal productive investment.
Mitigation of migrations	Population migratory balance, Typology of migrant population, Hypothesis on migration causes.
South to South Co-operation	Ongoing decentralised co-operation, Fields of co-operation, Ongoing co-operation with communities of the South.

Specific Purposes
Quality of life	Investment in this field, Expenditure for maintenance costs, Implementation and strengthening of specialised services, Current/ foreseen amount of resources deployed, Amount of waste collected, Amount of treated water, Development of services to citizens.
Management Improvement	Design and implementation of appropriate modelling, Use and development of tools and equipment Institution / enhancement of specialised services, Definition / enhancement of the staff structure, Implementation / improvement of procedures.
South to South Co-operation	Implementation of intermunicipal syndicate, Institution of community partnership networks, Participation to South to South exchange.
Job / Enterprise Creation	Institution and enhancement of services supporting job and firm creation, Creation / development of infrastructure supporting economic initiatives, Increase of budget for public contract, Creation / development of economic development support services.

Results
Know-how building	Development of management models, Management of the reception of the public, Identification of infrastructure maintenance indicators, Improvement of services quality control, training activities.
Human resources	Staff development, Female rate, Absentee-rate, Total amount of salaries and wages, Training activities, Statutory improvement, Improvement of organisation chart.
Budgeting	Revenue increase (taxation, receipts from services…), Creation of new revenue sources, Scale economies, Forecasting ability.
Management Improvement	Management quality / affordability, Budgeting quality / affordability, Implementation of financial management tools, Management tools development Training on management and use of management tools.
South to South Co-operation	Local ( national) partnership actions, South to South partnership actions, Definition of appropriate management means.
Training and advice	Appropriateness of training needs assessment, number of person engaged, Impact of training on the concerned departments.
Information exchange	Number of day of interviews / seminars, Publication of proceedings, Creation and use of data base, Surveys on new activities.
Co-operation in specific fields	Number of days (months) of consultant’s stay, Evaluation of produced documents, Surveys /assessments of produced change.
Auditing	Number of auditing days, Evaluation of produced documents, Induced change, its perception in persons / institutions Auditing request source.
Networking	Documents input, production and exchange Intervention fields, Assessment of needs, Tools and languages for communication.