Keynote Address by Dr Rajesh Tandon at Oslo Governance Forum (OGF)

Democratic Governance, Accountability and Public Service Delivery

Presentation by Dr Rajesh Tandon, President, PRIA (India) at Oslo Governance Forum, October 4, 2011

I am delighted to be here his morning; we are happy that PRIA is a partner and co-convenor of Oslo Governance Forum alongwith UNDP and others.

For us in PRIA, Governance is a combination of structures and processes of decision-making for mobilization and utilization of public resources in common public goods.

Therefore, both institutional structures (systems, procedures, rules etc) and the manner of decision-making are critical to understand governance; who is authorized and mandated to make decision, and how they make that decision—both are important.
Likewise, how resources—money, land, forest, water infrastructure, equipment, technology, human capacities, etc—are utilized is important, but how these are mobilized is also important. Thus taxation, ownership of natural resources and historical buildings (for example) are as important as budgeting, programming, legislating and implementing use of such resources.
Finally, common public goods have to be agreed to in public domain, and thus may differ from place to place, and community to community; the priorities of citizens may need to be agreed upon to establish common public goods, and may vary over time as well.

Now,democratic governance is all about doing governance democratically. It has several key features:

• Inclusivity---public goods include all citizens 
• Transparency---decision-making rules and processes are open to all
• Downward accountability—service providers and policy-makers demonstrate accountability to citizens
• Voice—all citizens have a voice, a say, in matters related to mobilization and use of public resources, and determination of priorities of public goods
• Horizontal accountability---public institutions follow internal systems of accountability upwards and horizontally to other institutions with the public spheres

Therefore, democratic governance is about enhancing the demand side of public service delivery. Social accountability refers to, therefore, to the demand side of democratic governance, where public service providers are held accountable to those who are expected to receive those services. Facilitating demand for democratic governance of public services entails three critical elements:

1. Information—access to timely and authentic information about service levels, time frame, costs of services and eligibility is useful to ensure that citizens demand quality services; this is why Right To Information is critical for access from public agencies and officials.
2. Organisation—historical efforts at collectivization of the poor and the marginalized have somehow lost significance these days; it is critical to organize the poor and the marginalized so that they feel empowered in collectives; sustained effort at building organisations and federations of organisations would be most valuable to alter relations of power in generating demand for accountability of public services.
3. Voice---developing critical reflections, analysis and perspectives of the poor and the marginalized so that they can voice their opinions, priorities, assessments and demands to the policy-makers and providers of public services is critical; also important is the interface for voice to be articulated in the presence of the delivery system.

Many tools and methods have been invented and tried by civil society to generate demand for quality public services; these are being show-cased in this Forum. Most of these depend on accessing reviews of budgets, plans and programmes. However, not enough attention has been paid to making plans; participatory planning needs to be more rigorously applied in the realm of demand side interventions for democratic accountability.

However, PRIA’s experiences suggest that interventions aimed at the supply side of public service delivery are also required to ensure democratic accountability. In many countries, the institutional, material and human capacities of public service delivery agencies are inadequate and weak. In such situations, social accountability efforts on the demand side may generate pressure, but do not result in better service delivery.
Systematic reforms of delivery systems require engaging with supply side interventions focused on efficiency, quality, standards and effectiveness of service providers themselves. This entails focus on design and internal administrative systems of institutions, their external, horizontal institutional linkages and accountabilities, and recruitment, training and performance orientation of appropriate human resources.

In most countries, several institutions co-exist that affect a particular service delivery; there is a need to focus on inter-institutional accountability of such mechanisms of service delivery. For example, quality of primary education depends on good infrastructure (which is supplied by one public agency through some construction contractors) and good teaching (teachers are trained by another set of public and private agencies). Public Service Commissions are meant to do recruitments. All of these agencies, in addition to education department, need to be focused upon in the supply side of horizontal accountabilities.


Supply side interventions are needed at all spheres of governance; it is not enough to demand better service delivery from local governance institutions if the devolution of authority, resources and capabilities is not adequately happening. Chasing down frontline service providers will yield no results in respect of service delivery; improving devolution will be necessary from higher spheres of governance.

A similar situation obtains in respect of shifting spheres of global governance of various services; under international conventions, new global institutions and mutli-lateral agreements, many aspects of service delivery are constrained by global governance. For example, treatment of HIV & AIDS requires ensuring accountability of UNAIDS and other formations where private foundations like the Gates Foundation may have enormous influence. Many international trade agreements constrain the affordability of many public services.

In addition, there is a growing trend of public-private partnerships in service delivery. While the state may establish broad policies, and provide resources for service delivery to citizens, actual service provider may well be a private agency—both for-profit and non-profit. This is increasingly the case with water supply, education (vocational in particular) and primary health care (especially the curative aspects).


Therefore, democratic governance would entail holding such private agencies to account, specially when some of them operate trans-nationally as well. As separation of policy, funding and delivery happen more often in future, democratic governance of public services would imply greater attention to all spheres of governance—from local to provincial to national and trans-national—as well as to all players in the supply chain, irrespective of their public, private or hybrid characters.

I hope that this Forum can deepen our understanding and practice of democratic governance in all its facets, including and beyond social accountability methods and citizens’ voices.

To learn more about the Oslo Governance Forum, click here.