From Pork to Performance
From pork to performance illuminates the politics of how public resources are spent and the difficulty of the ‘last mile’ of service delivery. Crumbling facilities, absentee teachers, and roads to nowhere waste resources and retard development in m...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC and AidData
2016
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2016/07/26544036/pork-performance-open-government-program-performance-tracking-philippines-phase-two http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24666 |
| Summary: | From pork to performance illuminates the
politics of how public resources are spent and the
difficulty of the ‘last mile’ of service delivery. Crumbling
facilities, absentee teachers, and roads to nowhere waste
resources and retard development in many countries around
the world. These failures in last mile service delivery
underscore a more intractable development problem, a
breakdown in accountability relationships, as politicians
and civil servants act with impunity to extract private
benefits at the expense of public goods. This study examines
the extent to which technology and transparency can disrupt
this low accountability status quo through turning
information into collective action to improve government
performance by strengthening the accountability
relationships between politicians, service providers and
citizens. In 2010, a new president came to power in the
Philippines with a compelling message, ‘no corruption, no
poverty’, and embraced open government as a vehicle to burn
avenues of retreat and advance governance reforms. This
study features examples from five sectors, education,
reconstruction, roads, municipal development, and tax
collection – where government champions sought to open up
the black box of service delivery and use digital platforms
to disclose data and strengthen accountability. This
research provides guidance for public, private, and civil
society leaders committed to using technology and
transparency to curb pork-barrel politics and create digital
dividends for their communities. The study combines rigorous
political economy analysis with practical diagnostic tools
and recommendations for open government initiatives to go
deeper in the Philippines and around the world. |
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