The overarching aim of this initiative is to improve public service delivery through better governance. The initiative promotes the implementation of a broad index to measure local governments’ progress across key aspects of public financial management, fiscal performance, service delivery, and investment climate, which will in turn enable and motivate the local governments to evaluate and improve their performance.

A nationally implemented tool will also encourage competition among districts and enable citizens to compare their local government’s performance against other district government’s. In addition, the central government will be able to monitor performance more accurately, encourage improvements through financial incentives, and refine and improve its decentralization policies. This work is executed by the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Unit of the World Bank. So far, the World Bank has fully developed and field tested the measurement framework .

A document from this work stream is available for download from the link below:

Making Decentralization Work for Development: Concept and Methodology of the Local Government Performance Measurement (LGPM) Initiative

This three-month study on district planning and budgeting focuses on the extent to which planning and budgeting processes can be integrated. The study particularly focuses on sector- and area-based planning, integration between the executives and the legislatives, and how donor sponsored programs may complement, or otherwise, the officially mandated Musrenbang process. Community participation in planning processes is reviewed and an assessment on how community inputs are captured in the district budget is made.

Bappenas is of full support to this work and has provided staff to collaborate with the DSF team. The centerpiece of the study is a research in six regional governments. The field work will be completed in June 2008 and its results will be presented to a wider audience soon after.

Documents resulted from this work stream are available for download from the links below:

• Analytical Study on District Planning and Budgeting Processes
• Analytical Study on District Planning and Budgeting Processes (Mission Report: Batang Hari, Jambi)
• Analytical Study on District Planning and Budgeting Processes (Mission Report: Kebumen, Central Java)
• Analytical Study on District Planning and Budgeting Processes (Mission Report: Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara)
• Analytical Study on District Planning and Budgeting Processes (Mission Report: Palembang, South Sumatera)
• Analytical Study on District Planning and Budgeting Processes (Mission Report: Poso-Palu, Central Sulawesi)
• Making People's Voices Matter: an Analytical Study on District Planning and Budgeting (Final Report)

In the past several years, a plethora of new regional regulations have emerged as regional governments are leveraging on their recently acquired law-making authority. The Justice for the Poor team of the World Bank has conducted a detailed analysis on such regional regulations. This includes identification and dissemination of ‘best practice’ examples of regional regulation creation and implementation, particularly those which are pro-poor.

The flagship product is PerdaOnline, a user-friendly online database on regional regulation that supports harmonization between national and regional regulations. PerdaOnline is currently the largest national online database on regional government regulations.

A national working group and five regional working groups have been established to review the existing regional government regulations. The district-level working groups are supported by The Legal Office of the regional governments, Bappeda, regional parliament members, NGO/CSO representatives, and academia. A guideline manual has also been developed to review regional regulations and ensure that both the process and content are fully inline with those of national laws. Best practice examples on service delivery are reviewed as well as the impact of the regional government regulations on public participation.

Documents resulted from this work stream are available for download from link below:

• Dinamika Penyusunan, Substansi dan Implementasi Perda Pelayanan Publik
• Laporan Teknis Kegiatan Diagnostic Study Program Perda Review, Justice for the Poor
• Panduan Melakukan Diagnostic Study Program Perda Review, Justice for the Poor, Bank Dunia, DSF
• Program Peraturan Daerah: a Fact Sheet (DSF and Justice for the Poor)
• Perda Program: a Fact Sheet (DSF and Justice for the Poor)

Identifying best practice, disseminating knowledge and assisting regional governments to adopt proven innovations are key in improving public service provision. Despite past efforts, however, progress in replicating best practice remains piecemeal.

This work streams aims to strengthen the criteria used by institutions sampled in the best practice cases and use them to successfully replicate the innovations. Current best practice databases will be reviewed and strengthened by adding links to experts, service providers and other sources of assistance. The development of successful peer to peer learning networks between local governments is essential in this work stream and, when appropriate, will be integrated into donor supported programs.

As the scope of best practice works can potentially be extensive, the study will focus on existing programs with particular emphasis on the education and health sectors, with financial management and human resource management as cross-cutting themes. The Ministry of Home Affairs’ Directorate of Capacity Building and Evaluation and Directorate of Regional Development are fully supporting this work, which is expected to be underway in July 2008.

The main product generated by this work stream is the Donor Mapping Database. The Ministry of Home Affairs’ Directorate for Capacity Building and Evaluation for Local Government Performance (Dit. PKEKD), which was in charge of the former Permanent Secretariat of the Joint Working Group on Decentralization, has identified and prioritized the task of developing a database on donor activities to support decentralization in Indonesia.

This database is a prototype designed by DSF, in partnership with the former Permanent Secretariat, as a quick-access tool for reference or monitoring by Government and donors. It serves to aggregate key information on existing major donor supported programs on governance and decentralization. The database provides a comprehensive overview of geographical and temporal project coverage by theme, approach, and methodology. It also includes interactive maps to help users identify where donor-supported programs are located. For donors, the mapping can be used to avoid implementing overlapping programs and to assist in the design of new programs.

The database is under constant updates and the Ministry of Home Affairs has expressed great interest in hosting the database in web-accessible form.

Other work under this area includes DSF’s support to an Indonesian foundation hosting a national workshop on pro-poor budgeting for regional governments.

Documents resulted from this work stream are available for download from link below:

• Kebijakan Pro Poor Budget dalam Konteks Kebijakan Desentralisasi Fiskal: Pelajaran, Idea, dan Inisiatif Baru Masyarakat Sipil
  
• Donor Mapping Database Narrative Report

The objective of this work stream is to improve local investment climates through scale up of one stop shops for licensing and improved service delivery of existing One Stop Service, scale up of rapid impact assessments to evaluate impact of regional regulations (Perda) related to regional economic development, increased capacity at provincial level to review local government’s investment climate reform initiatives, improved knowledge sharing among key stakeholders, improved capacity among local level service providers to support and sustain reforms. DSF’s support to the Director General of Regional Autonomy of the Ministry of Home Affairs on this work stream is assessment of One Stop Service Monitoring in the context of Sub-National Business Climate Reform Program. 

Document produced within this work stream could be downloaded from link below:

Measuring One Stop Service (OSS) Performance