Join us to discuss the role of citizens in building open, accountable and inclusive societies
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How can citizens’ actions help build a society that is more open, accountable and inclusive? In about a week, social accountability stakeholders from across the world will convene at World Bank headquarters to discuss just that, at the Global Partners Forum of the World Bank’s Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA).
Created in 2012, the GPSA helps governments and civil society organizations (CSOs) work together to tackle difficult governance problems and improve service delivery to citizens. The GPSA is supporting 32 operations in 25 countries. The operations include working to improve access to healthcare for marginalized groups in Mozambique, reduce the cost of maternal healthcare in Indonesia, increase education and health compliance rates in conditional cash transfers in the Philippines, improve water service delivery in Tajikistan, and, use citizen feedback to inform education reforms in Moldova. We use a combination of grants and investments in knowledge, learning and capacity building of practitioners for effective implementation.
At the 2017 Forum, we align our agenda with Sustainable Development Goal 16, and will focus on the role of citizen engagement and social accountability in building open, accountable and inclusive institutions. Whether we are talking about public sector reform, procurement, or delivery of services, we know that effective and .
However, in a fast-evolving world, we must address the preeminent challenges of today, including conflict, fragility and violence, displacement, assaults on democracy, the loss of trust in institutions, corruption, and closing civic space. Fortunately, there are enormous opportunities, as evidenced in the expansion of global and national initiatives to open-up governments, empower citizens and put them at the center of governance. We have also seen how instrumental it is to employ innovations in information and communications technology towards these goals. At the Forum, we will try to better understand the nature and implications of these emerging governance challenges, while focusing on the opportunities before us to take forward and scale these efforts.
We expect to have three main areas for discussion:
- How is the changing governance landscape affecting the practice of social accountability? We must explore the new frontiers of social accountability and adapt our approaches to respond to new challenges.
- How far have state institutions embraced citizen feedback and social accountability mechanisms, and what are we learning from these experiences? We know that social accountability can help build trust in institutions, for instance. But governments need to respond to citizens’ feedback. We want to assess how we can support these processes.
- What’s new in social accountability? Across the social accountability field, we believe it is time to look at the emerging innovative approaches and funding mechanisms, and assess to what extent they are delivering on their promises and aspirations.
As a key knowledge event, the Forum will help identify responses to the above questions, collaboratively drawing on emerging lessons learned by the GPSA and its partners. Ultimately, the event will help explore a new shared vision for social accountability and inclusive governance, and equip us all as partners to translate such a vision into impact.
Please join us online on Twitter via #GPSAForum, or watch our discussions. I also welcome you to share thoughts via comments below.
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In Africa there are different forms of governance in different countries but the countries have similar problems. There is therefore no linkage between governance and development in Africa. Even the more democratic countries have similar problems with the undemocratic ones. The problems include increasing unemployment, high levels of poverty, high costs of doing business, corruption etc
Anyone who invests money in this project becomes a land owner with the eventual ability to exploit others who are not. This is immoral and socially unjust, although it may seem like a good idea at the time.
All of the land should be purchased by the government and then leased out to those who find it worthwhile to take the opportunity to make good use of it. However, what use they choose should be entirely up to them, without government control--this not being land nationalization.
This proposal will create a national economy similar to that of Hong Kong, where nearly all the land is leased out in this way and there is no need for taxation because the national income from leasing is sufficient. It is the equivalent of Henry George's Single Tax (or land value taxation), but easier for the any of the present-day landlords to accept, since they sell the land at current prices and can then lease it relatively cheaply, leaving them with money to invest in its capitalistic development. The government will need to borrow money for this purpose, which once begun will last for perhaps 10 years until the leases catch up.
They can issue special land bonds instead of money, if this is likely to ease the danger of inflation were newly minted currency were to be paid.
Those world bank group give grant to the public for a business development
I LOOK FORWARD TO PARTICIPATING IN THIS SEMINAR
I would be glad to join the conversation.
I recently read in an article posted by World Economic Forum website where local community in Tajikistan were responsible for maintaining advisory body that helped in building better process for service complaints registration. This process improvement contributed towards ensuring that water gets delivered when and where it is supposed to. Increase in the fee collection from this process improvement lead to further investments in this sector. Similar success stories are being shared across varied forums and its reiterates the fact that the path to development becomes much more holistic when you listen to the voices of the local community and these community members are important stakeholders for good governance.
This concept has a strong potential to address issues in public health, education, water resource management and certain other services effectively.