Towards flexible evaluation schemes in areas with lacking information: a case of waste governance in Mexico

Abstract

Local governments face the need to achieve sustainability in the provision of public services, and to do so, proper governance is essential. This work proposes a method to assess governance in local waste management systems based on a set of indicators that are flexible and robust enough to allow objective and reliable evaluation even where the information that is available is deficient. The proposal is based on a set of indicators divided into six categories that represent an increasing order of governance maturity: institutional framework; government effectiveness; transparency and accountability; network creation; participation; and corruption control. The article presents the proposal and a first test in two Mexican municipalities, which are an example of municipal solid waste management systems in an incipient stage of development, where there may be serious limitations in terms of access to information. The results show that the methodology can be replicated in different contexts and can be useful for making decisions about improvements in municipal solid waste management systems or for comparing them with others. In addition, sufficient information was obtained for a first diagnosis of the cases studied, which indicates the coherence of the proposed framework. Points for practitioners Proper governance is essential to achieve sustainability in the provision of public services. The assessment of local governance must be robust enough to motivate changes and, at the same time, flexible enough to allow reliable evaluation where the quality of service and the availability of information may be scant. We propose a new framework for the assessment of governance in municipal solid waste management systems that meets these requirements, based on a set of indicators clustered according to governance maturity.