A Users' Guide to Measuring Local Governance

Table 5:
Scale to assess local governance
Value
Governance
Performance
+1 Perfect
+0.75 Very Good
+0.5 Good
+0.25 Fairly Good
0 Neutral
-0.25 Fairly Poor
-0.5 Poor
-0.75 Very Poor
-1 Non-existent
Gender focus
The LGB includes an equity criterion, while it could
also include sub-criteria with a gender perspective
under each theme. In addition, recommendations
are made in respect to the inclusion of a gender
balance in the sample to be interviewed.
Poverty focus
The LGB is focused on poverty as it assesses the
access to services for different groups in society
and can be used as part of the process of localising
the Millennium Development Goals, and so to
reduce poverty.
Strengths
• The LGB integrates quantitative data with
qualitative observations. It comes with a
user-friendly interface based on a common
database, spreadsheets and a word-processing
software.
• The LGB allows the comparison of results
between stakeholder groups (contributing to
very interesting dialogues between stakeholders
why they perceive elements of governance
differently), between municipalities and over
time.
• It can be easily adapted to specific situations
and contexts: it is applicable to national,
regional or local administrative levels and it
can be adapted to different themes and
sectors (such as decentralisation, environment,
public service provision, etc.)
• The LGB thus finds the right balance between
comparability and local specificity. In practice
most applications use a model that is specific
for a certain country as most practices,
procedures and standards are defined at that
level (applications in a federal system might
have to go one level lower).
• It can be applied in situations in which reliable
baseline and performance data are lacking but
also in settings where such data are
abundantly available. Recent applications of
the LGB in combination with Citizen/
Community Report Cards exercises turned out
to be very successful.
• The LGB is a participatory tool that involves
representatives from all sections of society
throughout the process, enhancing dialogue
and building consensus among the various
actors. In addition, it uses contextualised
indicators that speak to the local population.
Both factors contribute to a high level of local
ownership. It is action oriented and therefore
an assessment and capacity building tool at
the same time, creating understanding and
improved cooperation between stakeholders
in local governance settings.
• From a cost-benefit perspective, the instrument
can be applied in a resource poor setting
(resulting in lower levels of reliability and
representation) or in situations that require
higher levels of reliability and therefore more
intensive primary data collection thus increasing
the costs of the application.
• Since 2008, the localised specific model can be
easily translated into a web-based version,
making instant scoring and feedback to the
various stakeholder groups possible.
Weaknesses
• It requires a lead agent that is conversant with
the methodology and trained and approved by
the Impact Alliance. The agent needs to have a
good understanding of governance in the local
context in order to be able to localise the
instrument successfully.
• It requires a minimal technical support from
Impact Alliance to translate the localised model
into a web-based model for instant scoring.
A Users’ Guide to Measuring Local Governance 63