Governance Indices (KE0022)

Commitment 5: Improve public sector
performance through governance indices
To provide a comparative analysis of five key governance indices for their
veracity and reliability to allow the society to evaluate and possibly redefine
its perception towards performance of public sector and its specific
institutions.
Objective:
To assist the public in making informed choices, understand the impact of their
collective actions on public finances; and perhaps most importantly enable the
public to judge the performance of government and governmental institutions from
a composite analysis of the indices.
Status Quo:
Since the concept of governance is multidimensional, focus of the governance
indices vary substantially from narrow definition of bureaucratic corruption to
broader notion of governance, including a host of dimensions, such as, safety and
security, control of corruption, rule of law, voice and accountability. Existing
indicators do not take a comprehensive view of governance therefore,
unresponsive to its multidimensionality.
The commonly used indicators are; The World Bank’s Worldwide Governance
Indicator (WGI) and Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA), Overseas
Development Institute (ODI)’s World Governance Assessment (WGA), Mo Ibrahim
Foundation’s Ibrahim’s Index of African Governance (IIAG) and United Nations
Economic Commission for Africa’s (ECA) African Governance Report (AGR).
All these indices are faced with a host of problems in primary sources and survey
questions, perceived biases in the enumeration of respondents that may skew
results based on subjective contexts or ideology. These problems are passed on
to composite indicators too. These biases have an impact on the acceptability of
their results.
Ambition:
Develop a comprehensive framework for tracking and analysing governance
indices to bring out realistic and well-founded arguments to counter the negative
representation such indicators portray regarding the country.
Page 26 of 30
Leading implementing Organization
Nepad/APRM Secretariat, Kenya
Contact Person:
Mr. Daniel Osiemo
Chief Executive Officer
NEPAD/Africa Peer Review Mechanism (Kenya) Secretariat
Email: Daniel.Osiemo@nepadkenya.org
Phone: +254729 260 597
Timeline
September 2018 to May 2020
Open Government Values
Access to information, public accountability, citizen engagement,
New of on-going commitment
New
Other actors involved-government
Office of the president, Office of the Deputy President, NAKs
Other actors involvedINFONET Africa, Local Development Research Institute (LDRI)
Verifiable and measurable milestones to fulfil
the commitment
New or
ongoing
Start date End date
22. Develop a tracker for available governance
indices (APRM, Performance Contracts, SDGs,
Corruption Perception Index, Ease of Doing
Business)
New January
2019
December
2019
23. Develop technology tools and platforms for
available for access and analytics of
governance indices in the country
New April
2019
July
2020
24. Build capacity of public service entities to
improve services based on indices
recommendations.
New September
2019
May
2020
25. Disseminate indices analysis reports, two times
annual to the all stakeholders and public
New June
2019
May
2020

5. Improve public sector performance through governance indices

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan:

“To provide a comparative analysis of five key governance indices for their veracity and reliability to allow the society to evaluate and possibly redefine its perception towards performance of public sector and its specific institutions.”

Objective:

To assist the public in making informed choices, understand the impact of their collective actions on public finances; and perhaps most importantly enable the public to judge the performance of government and governmental institutions from a composite analysis of the indices.

Milestones

1. Develop a tracker for available governance indices (APRM, Performance Contracts, SDGs, Corruption Perception Index, Ease of Doing Business)
2. Develop technology tools and platforms for available for access and analytics of governance indices in the country
3. Build capacity of public service entities to improve services based on indices recommendations.
4. Disseminate indices analysis reports, two times annual to the all stakeholders and public

Start Date: January 2019

End Date: July 2020

Editorial note: This is a partial version of the commitment text. For the full commitment text see: https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/KENYA_Action-Plan_2018-2020_0.pdf

Context and Objectives

This commitment focuses on the development of a County Peer Review Mechanism that will be used to assess public service delivery at the sub-national or county level. The tool will explore citizen’s experiences of all fourteen service delivery areas, their views on the relevance of these services and whether they were discharged adequately and appropriately. [112] This commitment stems from a broader discussion around the relevance of OGP in the African context and its alignment with existing initiatives such as the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). The APRM is a basket of governance indicators widely utilized in the region to assess the effectiveness of governance systems and contribute to evidence based decision making. [113] In addition to being a platform for learning and experience sharing, the APRM aims to enhance accountability amongst African states. During Kenya’s second country review it was suggested that the role of county government be better highlighted to reflect the role they play in implementing and monitoring commitments in the National Programme of Action (NPoA).

In May 2013, the Kenyan government hosted an OGP Africa regional meeting that aimed to discuss the relationship between the OGP and African normative frameworks such as the 'African Shared Values Instruments’ and the APRM. This culminated in the establishment of a “Framework For Collaboration between the APRM and OGP” in May 2019, which would entail collaborating on: supporting implementation of APRM recommendations; substantive interaction between APRM national structures and the OGP multi-stakeholder forums; embedding both institutions or approaches; synergising efforts towards the attainment of various goals; and undertaking joint activities in three select countries. [114] This commitment is a manifestation of this collaboration, seeking to address key concerns around poor government performance and lack of an adequate monitoring and evaluation framework on the same.

The CPRM is a multi-agency product whose development and implementation is led by the APRM secretariat in Kenya. Implementation has thus far involved the Panel of eminent persons, all the independent commissions, the Intergovernmental Budgets and Economic Council, the Intergovernmental Relations Technical Committee; the Speakers of the National Assembly and the Senate; Council of Governors (COG), Ethics and Anti-corruption Commission (EACC), Vision 2030, Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research & Analysis and one or two representatives from civil society. [115] The construction of the CPRM made reference to: the Africa Peer Review Mechanism, performance contracts, County Integrated Development Plans, Sustainable Development Goals, Corruption Perception index and Ease of Doing Business Index. [116] The CPRM report and outputs will be widely publicised on the APRM site and launched at national summits, where governors of the reviewed counties would also be peer reviewed based on the findings of the report. It is envisaged that the CPRM will be undertaken three times during the electoral cycle, detailing an initial baseline, mid-term review and end term evaluation of county performance. [117]

The commitment is verifiable with deliverables such as the governance indices tracker, analytical tools and platforms and dissemination of analysis reports, as addressed in milestones 22-23 and 25, easily being tracked and assessed. Additionally, capacity building exercises as outlined in milestone 25 can be evaluated for their effectiveness. This commitment is relevant to the OGP value of technology and innovation for openness and accountability. The tracker could be extremely useful for synthesising large amounts of information and the analytical reports generated would go a long way to contributing to public service improvement. According to one state official the CPRM would foster “the kinds of conversations that we think are going to foster the growth of our democracy but also improve the performance of the counties, of county governments, in terms of serving their people”. ^[118] This commitment is also relevant to the OGP value of access to information in that analyses reports will be publicly disseminated.

Overall, this commitment could contribute to better decision making by synthesising large amounts of complex layers of data and information that can be readily consumed by policy makers, civil society and the public. The impact of this commitment would however be considered “minor” in addressing these concerns for various reasons. Firstly, while the CPRM holds a lot of promise, its potential is not evident in the design of the commitment which instead focuses on proposing a shift away from the use of existing indices given growing concerns around cited biases and weaknesses. This framing within the NAP appears to not be well understood as confirmed by sentiments shared at a civil society gathering in Nairobi in November 2019. [119] In addition, the design of the commitment is incongruent with what stakeholders feel is the main ambition, which is to customize the APRM in order to cascade the principles of good governance to the counties and improve county performance. [120] Rather, the current NAP focuses the ambition on countering the negative portrayal of the country as framed by existing indices.

Secondly, the dissemination of measures and indices focusing on service delivery and local government performance are often premised on the notion that information asymmetries contribute to erratic voter behaviour. Therefore, providing citizens with the right information should result in informed and better decision making during the electoral period. However, extraneous factors also play a significant role in shaping whether performance information is utilized and whether elected officials actually respond to citizen feedback. ^{[121] [122]} [123] According to Grandvoinnet, Aslam and Raha (2015), “within the state, elected and nonelected officials respond to different sets of incentives and might have divergent attitudes toward fostering or responding to social accountability.” ^[124] This has significant implications for the achievement of this goal. While access to information on government performance is useful, the commitment is likely to only improve civic participation if other factors are taken into account such as: the quality of the tracking or survey tools; the quality of information in the analysis reports; the communication strategy accompanying dissemination; and the accountability infrastructure that is built into the deployment of the CPRM.

Despite the public’s powers of evaluation being foregrounded in the objective, we see very little interface between the production of these analyses and initiatives towards enabling the public to make the necessary judgments. There is also no reference made to the specific decision-making processes, feedback or redress mechanisms that the public can engage with as a direct result of the milestones being fulfilled. The commitment is framed in a manner that emphasises production and dissemination and not necessarily the public holding court over findings once reports are shared. It is also noted that the consequences for falling short of performance targets, save for a marred reputation [125], are not clear, assuming that even this would be a sufficient deterrent in the Kenyan context. Little has also been said as to how the indices developed will gain prominence or legitimacy amongst the various constituencies being targeted for dissemination in order to affect electoral and political accountability. Lastly, the data collection exercise that is to be undertaken and which should inform the implementation of milestones 21, 22, 24 has been significantly delayed due to resource and funding limitations. [126] Part of the fundraising strategy is to see county governments integrate the CPRM into their public participation budgets. However, given the strained intergovernmental relations heightened by the introduction of the Division of Revenue Bill (2019),[127] [128] negotiating such a settlement will undoubtedly be challenging. [129]

Next steps

Governance indices can be useful. However, their utility is contingent on myriad other factors that should also be reflected on. The IRM Researcher recommends that the following be taken into consideration:

• The resourcing for and sustainability of the CPRM should be clearly established. [130]
• Public awareness and capacity building efforts for the utilization of results should be made a priority and incorporated into the wider work plan.
• The development of any tools should be considered a good opportunity to engage in co-creation with wider civil society and the public at large.
• In order to better reflect the access to information OGP value, the analysis report should also be accompanied by supporting documentation. For instance, performance contracts and other reports with sufficiently disaggregated data should be published alongside the report.
• A discussion on how the tracker will interface other government systems such as the Electronic Document & Records Management System, that was suggested in NAP II or the End-to-End initiative, which was to be an integrated service delivery portal.
• The commitment could be reinforced by outlining and discussing how such analyses could lead to a wider public reflection on collective action and their impact on public finance.
• Future iterations could track how the indices map on the quality of leadership over time.

5. Public Sector Performance

Completion: Not started.

None of the milestones were implemented as aimed for in the action plan. Instead, the Africa Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) Secretariat held sensitization forums [58] and drafted instruments that would be useful in collecting data and implementing the County Peer Review Mechanism (applicable to NAP IV). [59]

A misalignment between the reform’s objective and written milestones as well as financial limitations hindered implementation of this commitment. As explained in the IRM Design Report [60] and reiterated by the APRM and governance director, New Partnership for Africa's Development, and APRM Kenya Secretariat, the milestones, as documented, did not capture or relate to the actual intention of the commitment. Instead of focusing on criticizing the existing indices, the desired objective was to borrow from the comprehensive review mechanisms APRM conducts for its member countries at the national level and replicate them at the subnational inter-county level in Kenya. Even with this clarified intention, APRM faced financial limitations that hindered progress in carrying out major activities. While this commitment did not realize any change to government practice, it laid ground for the implementation of the activities carried forward in the next action plan.