Forests Sourcebook - HCV Resource Network

Box 5.11
Citizen Report Cards: Benchmarking Public Service Delivery
The Citizen Report Card (CRC) is a simple but powerful
tool used to provide public agencies with systematic
feedback from users of public services through sample
surveys on service quality to enable public agencies to
identify strengths and weaknesses in their work.
CRCs provide an empirical, bottom-up assessment
of the reach and benefit of specific reform measures.
CRCs identify the key constraints that citizens (especially
the poor and the underserved) face in accessing
public services and benchmark the quality and adequacy
of those services as well as the effectiveness of
the staff. CRCs aid in generating recommendations on
sector policies, program strategy, and management of
service delivery.
Citizen report cards can accomplish the following:
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Help to convert individual problems facing the various
programs into common sector issues.
Facilitate prioritization of reforms and corrective
actions by drawing attention to the worst problems,
and facilitate cross-fertilization of ideas and
approaches by identifying good practices.
Provide a benchmark on quality of public services as
experienced by the users of those services. Hence,
CRCs go beyond the specific problems that individual
citizens may face and view each issue from the
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perspective of other elements of service design and
delivery, as well as in comparison with other services,
so that a strategic set of actions can be initiated.
Suggest that dissatisfaction has causes that may be
related to the quality of service (such as reliability of
water supply), the type of difficulty encountered
while dealing with the agency to solve service problems
(such as complaints of water supply breakdown),
and hidden costs in making use of the public
service (such as investments in filters to purify
drinking water). Therefore, CRCs delve into different
aspects of performance to provide indicators of
problem areas in public services.
Test out different options that citizens wish to exercise,
individually or collectively, to tackle current
problems (for example, whether citizens are willing
to pay more, or be part of a group that has the
responsibility for managing public water sources).
Hence, CRCs are also a means for exploring alternatives
for improvements in public services.
CRCs have gained credibility because the methodology
involves systematic sampling across all subsections
or segments—including those who are satisfied as well
as the aggrieved—and presents a picture that includes
all opinions.
Source: Public Affairs Foundation 2004.
FOR PRACTITIONERS
There are a number of lessons learned that merit attention
in the implementation of institutional reforms:
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The context should define the process of reform. Accordingly,
it is important to distinguish between situations in
countries in economic transition (for example, the
Europe and Central Asia region, and China and other
parts of Asia); countries recovering from crises (the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia), and countries
responding to recent developments and having forests
serve multiple functions (Kenya, Tanzania).
National forest policy and strategy should be the basis of
institutional reforms—not vice versa.
Markets can be the best drivers toward sustainable forest
management, but reliance on markets can be devastating
if not coupled with necessary safeguards.
Sustainable forest management provides an appropriate
framework for the assessment of policy options. Impacts
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should be quantified and properly evaluated before
selecting the most desirable option.
Stakeholder participation and transparency are essential
in assessing policy options and implementing institutional
reforms.
Experience in large countries like the United States and
Canada shows that decentralization in forest administration
is an appropriate strategy within an adequate
national legal and institutional framework, and that
forestry development is best addressed at the local level
(see note 5.1, Decentralized Forest Management).
Decentralization reforms have to be coupled with strong
organizations at the regional level and effective monitoring
and control systems to prevent short-term political
and economic interests from making uncontrolled use of
forests and to reduce the potential for elite capture.
Where forests are large and diverse, a combination of
institutional arrangements for forest management may
NOTE 5.2: REFORMING FOREST INSTITUTIONS 171