your turn!

June 2008 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal1

Sector Wide Approaches in motion:

From an aid delivery to a sector development perspective

Bruxelles, 10.-11. June 2008


Your turn!

• In your experience from the water sector, what are the achievements and

strengths of water SWAps?What are the weaknesses and

challenges?


Overview: The general lessons

• Strong interest in the SWAp and PBAs• More driven by donors than by government• Limited analytical underpinnings• Increasing attention to civil society• Increasing concern about links to

decentralisation• Many rather incipient processes – weak

incentives?• And/or a SWAp concept beyond reach?


What is a Sector Programme?

A Sector Programme is a product of the Sector Approach. It is a government

(not donor) programme


Sector programmes: 5 typical elements

Sector policy in macro-framework

Public financemanagement

Accountability & Performance

monitoring

Institutions and capacities

Aid alignment andharmonisation

Services and enabling

environment


Key Issue: Capacity to SWAp?

• Too much complexity vis-à-vis available capacity and incentives to transform the SWAp into sensible action, for all stakeholders?


The SWAp concept – means and ends

• Born out of aid effectiveness concerns…• …but aim of sector programmes is sector

development, thus...• …raising the ante: how can a sector develop?• …implying:

systemic view, more to look at, more diagnosis handling political economy dimensions increased complexity

• The JLP is moving in this direction, offering imperfect analytical framework for “sector helicopter view”


Inputs Outputs

Open Systems Model for Sector Diagnosis

Sector systems and

Organisations

Contextual factors within influence

Outcome Impact

Contextual factors beyond influence

Sector Governance


Inputs Outputs

Open Systems Model for Sector Diagnosis

Contextual factors within influence

Outcome Impact

Contextual factors beyond influence

Change capacit

y

Speci

fic

ince

nti

ves

dri

vin

g p

erf

orm

ance

Policy frameworks

Decentralization and

deconcentration

Org

aniz

ati

onal ca

paci

ties

Sector coordination mechanisms

Feedback-mechanism

Public financia

l

management


Sector diagnosis and reform entry points

1. Wider context factors, public sector wide reforms2. Sector resources and inputs3. Sector outputs 4. Sector governance and accountability 5. Policy frameworks; sector vision and strategy; legal

issues and legislative frameworks6. Public financial management systems and capacity 7. Organizational capacities8. Feedback-mechanisms 9. Sector coordination mechanisms 10. Decentralization and/or deconcentration 11. Specific incentives driving or constraining

performance 12. The change capacity of domestic actor


Sector policy: process

• Country ownership still compromised

• How good is ‘good enough’

• Cobbling the pieces together

• Still weak policy – budget links

• ‘Policy - capacity = capacity gap’

• Too much ‘development (project?) planning thinking’ carry over


Sector policy: content

• Lack of prioritisation

• ‘Missing middle’ (in objectives and in targets)

Poor micro-, meso-, macro linkages

Lack of non-state actor involvement

• Taking account of winners and losers

Beyond government, below national level, towards disadvantaged areas and people

Can (or should) losers be implementers?


The budget, PFM, MTEF

• Theoretical importance well accepted

• De facto budget/PFM issues not yet that central

• Finance ministries conspicuously absent

• MTEFs in sector can be very rudimentary

• Limited sector incentives to pursue better PFM


Risky PFM issues in SWAps

• Risk of “state-centred” perspective – budget not equally important in all sectors

• Sector programme budget may only be part of sector budget, or cut across sectors

• Risk of overlooking fiscal decentralisation interfaces

• Risk of technocratic bias

• Premise of predictability uncertain

• MTEF – maybe, but when?


Institutions and Capacities

• Everybody’s concern

• Everywhere – and nowhere….

• Few handles – except the supply driven TA and training


Capacity development issues

• Mainstreaming CD in Sector Programmes

• Opening dialogue about institutional/political economy drivers and constraints

• Opening dialogue which respects that CD must be demand-driven

• Maintaining realism about what sector level CD can achieve

• Finding joint sector approaches to support CD


Accountability

Political system/gov

ernment

Non-state actors

Checks and balances

organisations

Frontline service

providers

Core public agencies

Context

Donors, internation

al organisatio

ns

Governance

Accountability


Strengthening domestic accountability

• Focus on expenditure

• Focus on sector outcomes

• Focus on CD for government

• Bias towards mutual accountability concerns

• Attention to revenue

• Service users to hold providers to account

• CD of ‘pillars’ of accountability

• Priority of domestic accountability


Monitoring • Harmonisation and alignment successes

• Monitoring for learning vs monitoring for accountability

• The problem with indicators

• Monitoring systems as government management information tools first and donor ‘checking tools’ after


Alignment, harmonisation, modalities

• Unprecedented push for H&A• Government push essential – donors alone won’t

make it• Overdoing donor-govt coordination may crowd

out domestic sector coordination• Coordination often poorly performed• Increased time required for SWAps • Inclusive SWAp model appreciated, but..• Budget support still contentious


H&A issues

• Putting the sector coordination perspective first

• Getting business-like approach to coordination, and managerial capacity to pursue it

• Embracing transaction costs – pay them with a smile!

• Working on tensions around donors coming too close for comfort


Decentralisation

• Centralising tendencies in SWAps – how to deal with decentralisation is key issue in several JLP events

• Central government faces “donor dilemmas” vis-à-vis local governments

• Funding mechanisms, policy/legal mechanisms, bargaining – all in play to define autonomy/control balance

• Country perspective on the tension and issues, not an aid perspective


Concluding remarks: Implications?

• Looking for a middle ground between..

the Scylla of a building a system on sand,

stuck in capitals, pondering about

complexities; and..

the Charybdis of unprincipled, opportunistic

muddling through


Strategic Incrementalism?

• A sector development perspective• Explicit political economy perspective• Consistent actor/stakeholder perspective• Strengthened managerial inputs• Common sense focus on results• …building SWAp as a process also with focus on

processes• …and thereby fostering trust through modesty,

realism and patience….

your turn!

Documents

water sector

sector approach

nils boesenerma uytewaalwhat

nils boesenerma uytewaalyour

sector wide approaches

capacity gaptoo

swap concept

vis available capacity