Collaborating with Local Governments of Nepal for Public Sector Accountability

Insights from the Co-creation Workshop of YoungInnovations with government officials and civil society in SUSASAN Project

In July 2018, the first workshop on Innovation, Data, and Technology (SUSASAN School) took place with a tremendous amount of enthusiasm among local governments and civil society. The Local government took ownership of the tools developed in the first year of SUSASAN Project. See what happened during the workshop here.

The Co-creation of Technological Solutions

Following the July Workshop, the IT officials of the local governments were more interested in innovating technology-based solutions to the challenges to accountability in respective local governments. This is how the model of co-creation i.e. developing solutions based on the issues was established.

The following are the tools that were co-created with each district teams in the second year of SUSASAN:

1. Audio Message Broadcasting System — Team Lalitpur
2. Grievance Redressal Management System — Team Achham
3. SUSASAN Municipal Mobile Application — Team Sindhupalchok
4. Electronic Citizen Charter — Team Dadeldhura
5. Citizen Report Card and Exit Poll — Team Bajhang
6. Infrastructure Management System — Team Kailali

The second year of SUSASAN was truly a highly collaborative year between all the stakeholders of the project, the local government's IT officials, the district civil society representative and the partner organization to develop tools and put in the effort to bring the tools to fruition. Here is how we went about it,

Process of co-creation

At the end of the first workshop, each team went back home enthusiastic and prepared to work on the new tools for the second year. It was decided that we would primarily use Gitlab as the means of communication between us and the team. We wanted to have all of the information in one place. Though we only succeeded partially, it was quite productive for some of the teams.

1. We designed and developed initial mock-ups and requirements for each tool to fulfill the goals that were set out for each tool by the project.
2. We shared all the information we had with each team and asked for their feedback on Gitlab. This was followed up with Skype calls with the teams.
3. The teams together with us went through feedbacks and questions they had on the tool’s designs and requirements. We discussed the challenges the tools would face in the local context, what are the changes, modifications, and additions that we would need to make the tool a success.
4. We worked on the changes as per the feedback and shared the prototypes we had developed and asked them to test it out.
5. After the testing was completed, together we supported the Local governments on the roll-out of each tool for the districts.

Year-Two’s Co-created Tools

Here are the tools in more depth which were co-created with the district teams for their municipalities,

Audio Message Broadcasting System

The Audio message broadcasting system is a tool developed for local government to reach out the illiterate, visually impaired and marginalized groups through an audio message. The audio message broadcasting system is based on IVR technology. Using the Audio Message Broadcasting System, the local government officials can,
- Maintain a separate list of contacts of the targeted beneficiaries
- Send an audio message to the beneficiaries
And the system allows the user to repeat the message once.

The Audio message broadcasting system was co-created with Team Lalitpur and being used by all the municipalities.

Grievance Redressal Management System

The Grievance Redressal Management System is a technology developed primarily for the citizens to make it easier for them to send grievances to the government and for the government to manage the grievance received from the citizens in a more systematic manner. The focus during the design of the system was to prioritize an offline mechanism for the reporting of grievances. Through the system, the citizens can send their grievance to the local government through the IVR system using their phones. The Grievance redressal committee is notified by the system to take action on the reports made and can easily keep track of the reports until they are resolved. The system also gives stats of the reports and their status through the dashboard of the municipalities.

The grievance redressal management system is co-created with Team Achham. The system has been brought into use by Sanfebagar Municipality and Bannigadhi Jayagadh Rural Municipality.

SUSASAN Municipal Mobile Application

The SUSASAN Municipal Mobile Application is an android applications developed to conveniently provide information about municipality’s news and notices (from the official government website), information about the services being provided by the municipalities and wards, the policies, decisions, budget and program data of the municipalities, the map of that municipality with the points of interest, and the municipal staff information.

The Municipal Mobile App was co-created with Team Sindhupalchok. The mobile applications for Barahbise Municipality and Sunkoshi Rural Municipality is publicly released in the Google Play store.

Electronic Citizen Charter

Electronic Citizen Charter, the eCitizen charter is a tool designed to disseminate the information about the services provided by the municipality for the citizens. The citizens can get details about the services from the tool without having to visit the government office, thus making them pre-informed.

The component was co-created with Team Dadeldhura. The eCitizen Charter is being used by Amargadhi Municipality, Nabadurga Rural Municipality, Barahbise Municipality, and Sunkoshi Rural Municipality.

Citizen Report Card and Exit Poll

Citizens Report Card under SUSASAN is developed in order to develop a proper social accountability tool for the use of local government in a localized context. The Citizens Report Card is expected to bridge the gap between the formulation of revised Public Hearing Guideline and the promulgation of special laws related to basic education and basic health services. The Exit Poll is a social audit tool in for collecting opinion/perception of people leaving the local government’s executive office after receiving some services. The questionnaires of both the citizen report card and exit poll have been deployed in the form of a mobile app for collecting data.

The tool was co-created with Team Bajhang. The tool is being prepared for all the municipalities to test before the public hearing so that they have the tool ready for the public hearings in their respective municipalities.

Infrastructure Management System

Infrastructure Management System (IMS) is a platform specially developed for local government with a possibility to replicate in other local contexts as a robust system to manage infrastructure projects that the local governments carry out each year. Infrastructure Management System is an integral of a public dashboard, municipality user dashboards and a Mobile App.

The infrastructure management system is co-created with Team Kailali i.e. in Dhangadhi Sub-metropolitan City and Kailari Rural Municipality. The system is fully brought into use by Dhangadhi Sub-metropolitan City along with the formulation of Infrastructure Management System Operating Guideline from the current fiscal year.

The workshop was more impactful as the tools were presented to the rest of the group by the team who co-created the tools with us. And it was not just the tools they shared, they also talked about their experience with the tool and the procedures they had to undertake to have the tools implemented. This has definitely helped all the participants understand the benefits of the different looks, the challenges and how they can connect each tool with the local context.

The workshop could just have been about the tools and technology but that would have been monotonous for the participants, and more importantly a lost opportunity, that is why we took this as an opportunity to be on the same page with all the stakeholders,

• reflect back at all we had accomplished
• reinforce and educate the partners at the local level with the knowledge that would support them to carry out the project successfully
• think and plan for the days ahead

Looking back, we went through what our approach has been to develop online and offline technologies to support the local governments and the techno-hubs to meet the specific objective we have set for the project. We also looked into the problems and challenges we have faced and might face in the future and how to deal with them so that they do not hold us back. We also looked at the tools we have developed and discussed the different tools and technologies the local governments are using to make their work easier and reach the citizens. This turned out to be a very fruitful discussion which expanded the participant’s horizon on technology, the practical problems, and possible solutions.

In the following sessions, the participant also learned about e-governance at the local level, also about transparency, accountability and open data and how these things are relevant for local government and also their importance. This played into the perspectives the participants needed to understand which tools might be important and relevant in their local context. We also did exercises to understand who the users are for the tools we have developed and possibly give an idea into what new tools we could develop in the days to come. These presentations were aimed to equip them with the knowledge and skills necessary, which included video creating and editing training, to be able to decide and work on what's best for the project at the local context. This inevitably helped them to come up with their rollout plan for all the tools in the following year.

To conclude

The workshop gave all of the national partners (YoungInnovations, Freedom Forum, CECI), the six District Partners and the 12 Local Governments to synergise for the betterment of the project, to come to an understanding on how to move forward with our current tools developed under SUSASAN as per our relevance of the tools at the local context and how to begin the process of handing over the tool to the local governments themselves. This was also a great opportunity for team building, which will help reach a better outcome for the project going forward.

*SUSASAN, Sustainable use of Technology for Public Sector Accountability in Nepal, is an ongoing project being run by CECI Nepal in 6 districts in partnership with 12 Local Governments. SUSASAN is an initiative to bridge the existing gap between the government and the citizen, especially the WMGs(Women and Marginalized Groups), with the use of Technology and to help the government adopt the open government practices, to help them be more accountable and transparent.You can find more about SUSASAN here.