Local governance & decentralization
Framework for promoting transparency at the local level
Governance approach to transparency at local level
Authors:
Publisher:
United Nations Human Settlements Programme , 2004
This paper is part of an Urban Governance Toolkit Series. It describes the governance approach to promoting transparency at the local level. The governance approach is based on an institutional perspective that sees corruption as primarily a failure of institutions.
The paper presents five strategic entry points as a framework for improving transparency. These are:
- Assessment and monitoring: This involves understanding the types and scale of corruption and the degree of transparency in local governance, while creating a baseline against which progress in improving transparency can be measured.
- Access to information: This involves measures to improve stakeholders' access to information so that they may participate in decision-making more effectively.
- Ethics and integrity: Tools for clarifying what is expected from professionals, and including monitoring mechanisms to ensure they adhere to their commitments and are sanctioned if they break public trust.
- Institutional reform: These include both the streamlining and simplification of administrative procedures and structural innovations to promote participation and accountability.
- Targeting specific issues: Using specific issues as entry-points for improving transparency.
In practice, these tools are often used in different combinations depending on the specific context. In the case of Bulgaria, for example, a variety of measures have been recommended that fall under different strategies, to enhance local governments' effectiveness in building transparency and combating corruption at the local level. These include increased information flows between residents and the local authority, the development of a code of ethics and the establishment of an independent ethics commission, and training on the appropriate role of councillors.
Similarly, a synthesis of the American experience with weeding out corruption in local government indicates that a range of tools need to be applied in combination, in order to significantly bring down corruption and enhance transparency.
