Adapting Collaborative Approaches for Service Provision to Low-Income Countries: Expert Panel Results

Kimberly Pugel,Matthew Koschmann,Amy Javernick-Will,Karl Linden,Shawn Peabody

doi:10.3390/su12072612

Abstract

The international development sector is increasingly implementing collaborative approaches that facilitate a range of sectoral-level stakeholders to jointly address complex problems facing sustainable public service delivery, for which guidance does not explicitly exist. The literature on collaborative approaches has been built on experiences in high-income countries with vastly different governance capabilities, limiting their global relevance. A Delphi expert panel addressed this need by evaluating 58 factors hypothesized in the literature to contribute to the success of collaborative approaches. The panel rated factors according to their importance in low-income country contexts, on a scale from Not Important to Essential. Experts agreed on the importance of 49 factors, eight of which were essential for success. Rich qualitative data from open-ended responses revealed factors that may be unique to low-income country contexts and to service delivery applications, including how government capacity, politics, donor influence, and culture can influence decisions on structuring leadership and facilitation roles, appropriately engaging the government, and building legitimacy. Key considerations for future practice and research are summarized in a table in the appendix. This study contributes to both literature and practice by identifying the relative importance of factors to consider when designing collaborative approaches in low-income countries with limited governance capabilities.

Highlights

Around the world, local governments are mandated to provide certain public services, such as water, sanitation, health, energy, transportation or education, but in many countries, they do so poorly
This paper presents the results of an expert panel that was convened to rate the importance of factors found to contribute to the success of collaborative approaches in low-income countries
The results represent a vast amount of experience across the world on the efficacy of various factors or characteristics influencing the success of collaborative approaches

Summary

Introduction

Local governments are mandated to provide certain public services, such as water, sanitation, health, energy, transportation or education, but in many countries, they do so poorly This could be due to budget or capacity challenges or result from poorly-defined roles, responsibilities, or governance structures for service provision. By ‘limited governance’, we are referring to contexts where the government is less effective at providing services, where regulatory capacity is constrained, where political instability and corruption are more prevalent, and where citizen voice and accountability is weaker [7,8] It is these contexts with limited governance where a large swath of informal and non-governmental service providers step in, where multi-lateral donors heavily influence local government agendas, and in many cases where there is a need for greater coordination and collaboration to sufficiently provide a public service. To formally document some of these adaptations and provide better guidance to development practitioners, we convened a panel of experts to evaluate the importance of a series of factors that influence collaborative approaches for service delivery in limited-governance contexts

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion