Accountability
Citizenship
3 rd of 4 parts
Meguechil
confusion of roles. Even if people have good information, they need to know who complain about the poor performance of the programs or the responsible official. The allocation of responsibilities of a public service is not always known or clear. Take for example the education sector hypothetically, if a parent observes the teacher who teaches your child misses too often - Something not uncommon in schools - with whom they can complain: the Director, the Supervisor, the School Inspector, Head of Sector, the Regional Sub-coordinator, the Director of General Services, the Head of Department level school, the Assistant Secretary of Basic Education, the Ministry of Education in Guerrero? Often parents do not know how to complain or to whom they should present. Knowing who is responsible for what may prove even more confusing in decentralized or decentralized train. The legislation concerning education is often ambiguous with respect to the functions of each level of government, and the commitments political end up being often shared responsibilities. The ambiguous assignment is further obscured by those ministries that refuse to implement the legislation on decentralization in order to maintain as well, his powers of patronage and electoral clientelism. 
Few initiatives. Good accountability requires good incentives. In the private sector, the business that does not satisfy its customers goes bankrupt, or at least lose customers. In some governments of other countries (Chile, for example), where auditors found that public sector managers have spent budget incorrectly, subjected to criminal penalties and jail is paid. However, take the hypothetical example of education, almost no one suffers the same consequences if children fail to learn. The teacher's pay is not linked to their performance in classroom teaching, although in some exceptional circumstances, when schools perform better than expected, they can receive bonuses. Hardly ever, neither the directors nor teachers lose their jobs as a result of poor performance in assessment tests. Today should be implemented a system of sanctions and rewards of public service in the Executive, Legislative and Judicial, evaluate for citizenship mark a united government Guerrero. Until next time. What should be done to strengthen accountability and improve the performance of public policy?
From this diagnosis of what prevents accountability of public policies, it is clear how to strengthen it: 1) strengthen the capacity of voice, 2) Improve the administration, 3) Provide better information, 4) Clarify roles and responsibilities, and 5) increase the incentives and sanctions. Each of these areas are discussed below.
1. STRENGTHENING THE CAPACITY TO SPEAK. There are several ways strengthen the voice of the user: 1. Shortening the distance between the user and policy makers,? 2. Create instances of specific governments, 3. Introduce participatory mechanisms, 4. ? Provide alternative of choice to users, 5. Engaging citizens to get involved in making public policy decisions.
If other factors remain unchanged, the voice of citizens in public policy - that is, their ability to articulate their demands for more and better public policy - is greater the closer you are the operator of policymakers. This would reduce the length of the line between "operators policymakers "and" service users. "This distance will be shortened through regionalization and even more, to the municipal public policy. This is an argument in favor of making public policy decisions to be returned, whether lower levels of government or the government itself (or network of services).
Apart from the distance between citizen and who operates the policies, the citizen's voice will be strengthened through the creation of specific government agencies or a single topic. The form may be that the regional government offices are offices, and its function, finance and distribute policies public. The advantage of such government agencies is that citizens can make known their preferences more clearly. The choice of a server or official policy of the Region and Headquarters have different criteria that address issues of public policy programs.
Another alternative to increase the capacity of user's voice is to complement the state government to regional councils, which may be elected or appointed. In most cases, these councils are strictly advisory, but may have a substantial influence on sectoral priorities identified if the selection of members is taken seriously. If they are responsible for an important role eg monitoring the attendance of teachers, boards of civic participation at school may also increase the voice capacity of parents and mothers.
There are also other participatory mechanisms to increase the voice of the citizen. For example, if it is developed in a participatory budgets, allows for greater involvement of citizens in the identification of spending priorities. The creation of associations of regional parents is another means by which citizens can organize themselves to be heard in front of policy makers at regional and state levels.
Just as competition between makes companies more responsive to citizens, and also give citizens the opportunity to switch from one program to another, for the type of service or benefit increases voice capacity. The benefits and results of public policy programs funded by the government allow citizens to choose both private and public service.
Finally, the direct participation of citizens - as volunteers, monitors, or sources of funding - may increase your voice.
2. IMPROVING THE ADMINISTRATION. The strengthening of the citizen's voice effectively reduces the distance between it and the operator policy. But even if the operator meets the policy requirements of the city, you need to also ensure that senior officials meet their guidelines and provide citizens with services they want. Alternatives to improve the management are: 1. Customer-oriented culture,? 2. Performance objectives, 3. Improve monitoring, 4. Delegate responsibilities and budgets, 5. Performance incentives, 6. Human Resources, 7. Financing stable / predictable.
In general, businesses are successful when they "listen to the customer" from the instance of directors to the store counter. Create a culture that is oriented toward the customer or user perspective - Listening to citizens - is therefore a tool to improve management in public policy services. It is important to reform efforts in public policy systems to bring public participation in decision making that can improve management and performance through explicit agreements on the distribution of budget decision-makers and responsibility for achieving performance targets, incentives or penalties for good or bad performance, and motivated and trained servants who were evaluated annually with consequences on their future wages and claims professionals.
3. PROVIDE BETTER INFORMATION TO THE USER. Often these systems have been abandoned because there really was little demand for information by decision makers. In contrast, has done little to create information systems for citizens in order to improve accountability and encourage citizen demand for better performance.
What kind of information citizens need to make public institutions accountable? Suggests some aspects of information that citizens should have, and just as importantly, how information should be presented, such as; 1. ? Minimum standards, 2.? Service performance, 3.? Financial performance, 4.? Comparison 5. Relevant, 6. ? Selective.
Citizens need three types of basic information on public policy: minimum service standards, service performance and financial groups. Minimum service standards set a benchmark for the size of the program, etc. that citizens can be used as indicators to assess their own program. The performance of public service includes measuring the benefit of citizens and their success, and so on. Financial performance includes measuring the adequacy of resources and efficiency in its use. Furthermore, it could include a measurement of losses due to corruption or bureaucratic inefficiency. To measure this leakage of resources, it could take the value of state and federal budgets for each city and dividing it by the value of what is actually spent by each citizen in the state. Until next time.
