an Eldis Resource
Accountability in the provision of social services: a framework for African research
Accountability in service delivery in African countries
Authors:
P. Collier
Publisher:
African Economic Research Consortium , 2007
The politician who wants expenditure on service provision to provide good services, the clients of the service, and the taxpayers who finance it, all face the same agency problem. This paper discusses how the agency problem can be addressed by governments in order to realise the value for money and enhance accountability in the provision of services delivery.
The paper begins by putting forward the agency problem, which arises because of a divergence between the underlying interests of the decision-takers on the one hand and those who receive the benefits and bear the costs on the other. By nature of their rationale for being provided through a non-market process, the provision of these services generates a public benefit and as a consequence workers in these activities can potentially derive job satisfaction above-and-beyond their earnings. Human beings have a range of motivations and these affect worker performance in service delivery activities. Even in the market economy, work is usually motivated partly by a desire to perform well for its own sake.
Politicians are responsible for resource allocation, and also for the design of the system of accountability in which service providing agencies operate. They in turn are held to account by citizens. Incentives combined with imperfect observation of performance increase the risks faced by employees and, since these risks have to be compensated to continue to satisfy the participation constraint, they increase the overall hiring cost incurred by the principal.
The paper concludes by providing some conclusions and recommendations for overcoming the agency problem:
- In the domain of basic service delivery, private for-profit delivery might often be problematic. However, government ownership may also be less effective than if ownership is vested more broadly, using a variety of non-government or local government entities.
- Employee motivation may be much more important than has conventionally been acknowledged: because basic services are intrinsically worthwhile, there is plenty of scope for self-motivation, with employees identifying with the goals of the organisation.
- Increased monitoring may be valuable given that performance is currently not well-observed. However, top-down monitoring may undermine motivation. Peer pressure and bottom-up monitoring might be more effective than top-down monitoring.
