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Strengthening county officials' competencies in Liberia to enhance local government service delivery, with a focus on civic education and sustainable development.
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L I B E R I A Local Government Capacity Building Programme
Liberia Institute of Public Administration (LIPA) Post Office Box 9045 North Gibson Street, Mamba Point Monrovia – Liberia Tel:(+231 (0) 77 360 759) or (0) 77 894 254); Cell: (+231 (0) 6 956 041); Email: <liberia_i_p_a@yahoo.com> or <lipa@lipa.gov.lr> Website: www.lipa.gov.lr
Overview & Introduction Most of Liberia’s infrastructure and basic social services are located in Monrovia and other urban centers, underscoring the disparity in living standards and service delivery between urban and rural areas. President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, recognizing that sustainable peace will largely depend upon the ability to address such gross inequities, has committed to decentralizing recovery and development and emphasizes the role of the counties in the process of national recovery, placing the interests of the people at the center of national development planning.
The UN in response is Liberia committed itself to supporting the Government’s decentralizing efforts. It established County Support Teams (CSTs) in each county, aimed at ensuring a coherent and consolidated UN approach to addressing county challenges, as well as supporting the Government, in particular the Superintendent’s office, and building capacity of government institutions so that they can increasingly take over the responsibilities for social services, national security, reconstruction and development.
As local government require relevant capacities, the project aims at strengthening the county officials’ competencies required to undertake their roles and responsibilities. It focuses on: • Civic Education, • Skills-based, and • Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) training as well as • Support to the County Development Agenda (CDA) preparation. • To ensure sustainability of training efforts, organizational • and enabling environment are addressed simultaneously.
Descriptive Summary The restoration of Liberia from the massive devastation that incapacitated the nation politically, economically and socially as a result of almost two decades of civil conflict has steadily shaped-up with vital resuscitation interventions and susceptible recovery efforts. A particular input to the processes was support to recapacitate and strengthen the recovery of local administration as a means of facilitating the devolution of public sector management at the local government level.
As a tangible support to the recovery effort, the Government of Liberia and the United Nations System signed a programme cooperation agreement for “strengthening the capacity of local administration in Liberia”. The programme was intended to enhance the capacity of local administration in assessing, planning, coordinating and mobilizing resources for and delivering essential services at the community-level in support of the restoration of civil authority and sustainable recovery in Liberia. Cardinal to this outcome was the strengthening of county officials’ skills through training, reorientation and human resource development as a human capacity building intervention.
In order to undertake the capacity building intervention, the Liberia Institute of Public Administration (LIPA) was requested to conduct a local government capacity building activity as a component of the County Support Teams (CST) Project. Thus, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) as a project cooperation agreement was entered into between the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Liberia Institute of Public Administration (LIPA) to provide capacity building for key local officials at the county and district-levels throughout the nation.
An implementation framework was formulated to facilitate the activity execution processes for the CST Project capacity building component. The local government capacity building is one of the key strategic responses that was proposed for strengthening the capacity of local administration comprised three essential elements: • Civic Education Training; • Training Needs Assessment; and, • Competency-base Training.
Background & Context The local government administration in Liberia is centralized and being entercountered with the challenge of decentralization as the central government transfer certain responsibilities and decision-making powers to local government institutions. The role of leaders, both elected and appointed and as a community representatives at the local government level, is to being revisited and redefined in the light of the new developments involving restructuring of government at national and local levels, the strengthening of democratic institutions, and the introduction of multi-party political systems.
The state’s role is to assist and to create the conditions for local actions for sustainable development to emerge and grow. The state should therefore play the role of facilitator, net-worker and monitor. It should maintain a balance between weaker and stronger local capacities. • Some of the challenges at the sub-national levels identified by citizens of Liberia during a participatory assessment processes, the PRS/CDA district, county and regional consultations included: • Weakened capacity for governance and absence of an enabling • policy environment for effective delivery of services in all key sectors • Poor institutional capacity for service delivery and ineffective work f • low processes within sector ministries and agencies responsible for • sub-national service delivery • Lack of skilled and committed human resources
The following response framework seeks to serve as a reference map for identifying the elements that impacts the current performance of government and development partners as well as citizens in meeting local development needs – noting that the view of citizens (on development impact) across the 15 counties is largely negative.
The key questions for national sector ministries, agencies and the Ministry of Internal Affairs to address the sub-national context would be: • How do we need to reorganize our institutions, with • what kind of processes, culture, vision, strategies • and resources, to allow an effective output of • services and economic growth? • What kind of human resources, characterized by • what knowledge, skills, values and attitudes, do we • need in order to drive this change? • What kind of a policy and regulatory environment, • leadership, level of ownership and accountability, • characterized by what mindset and worldview, will • enable this development to be fully realized?
Civic Education Training Over 1,400 local government officials in all 15 counties, including Superintendents, City Mayors, Commissioners, Chiefs and Line Ministry Representatives, participated in the various county-based civic education training aimed at providing awareness of their civic responsibilities and duties. Civic Education Participants by Counties
The training, coordinated by the Liberian Institute of Public Administration (LIPA), was based on the National Civic Education Master Plan and focused on: • Leadership and national identity, • Transparency and accountability, • Human rights and rights of the child, • Gender and governance, • Peace-building and reconciliation, • Environmental protection and conservation, • Civics and Government; and • Millennium Development Goals. • The modules, prepared jointly by Government (LIPA), UN (UNMIL), NGOs and donors, were endorsed by the National Steering Committee on Civic Education.
Training Needs Assessment The local government training needs assessment exercises for the local government capacity building activity commenced with the development of the survey framework along with the instrument for interviewing respondents. It was intended to up-date information in respect to staff qualification and experience as well as the challenges perceived. This exercise included an interactive consultative process with relevant stakeholders and partners on the framework for structuring the needs assessment questionnaire.
The final draft instrument was circulated to the field for inputs from the various partners’ offices in the counties. The structural format of the needs assessment questionnaire was divided into eight (8) parts. The training needs assessment survey was designed to be conducted over a two days period in all of the fifteen (15) counties to a targeted audience of seventy-five (75) local officials per county. • Those targeted included: • County Superintendents, • Assistant Superintendents for Development, • City Mayors, District Commissioners, • Traditional Chiefs, and • Representatives of line ministries/agencies • (operating in the counties).
Training Needs Assessment Format Structure • 1 Understanding the job • 2 Clear Vision and Mission • 3 Managing People • 4 Managing the Office • 5 Managing the Money • 6 Areas of Performance • 7 Some major performance problems experiences • 8 Recommended areas for training County-based Jobs by Educational-level
The training needs assessment questionnaire contains the following parameters: • Identification • Understanding the job • Clear Vision and Mission • Managing People • Managing the Office • Managing the Money • Areas of Performance • Some major performance problems • experiences • Recommended areas for training Needs Assessment Respondents by Counties
The categories of jobs classification at the local government level include: • Local Government Official (14) • Judicial Official (11) • Educational Administrator (10) • Professional/Technical Staff (14) • Clerical Staff (4) • Social Workers (23) • Chiefs (9) • County Officials (29) • Support Staff (15) • Auxiliary Health Workers (3)
Skills-base Training Simultaneously with the civic education efforts, a training capacity needs assessment was undertaken to guide further skills-based training. The report of the assessment indicates that 30% of local government staff has a level of education less than primary school. Computer Literacy Training Participants by Gender
Key training needs include leadership, management, project planning, administrative skills and conflict resolution. The needs assessment highlighted demands for various skills-based training targeting different local government staff in areas such as: a) leadership and governance, b) management and administrative skills, c) project planning and management, d) monitoring and evaluation, e) decentralization and local governance, and f) conflict resolution and reconciliation. Computer Literacy Module Structure A) Introduction to Basic Hardware B) Introduction to Windows C) Introduction to Electronic Filing Guide D) Introduction to MS Word E) Introduction to MS Excel
A local government computer literacy training course was delivered with the development of a computer literacy training module to provide computer literacy knowledge to officials of the local administrations in the counties as a means of enhancing their competency skills-base at the county-level that will be helpful for the timely processing of data and information dissemination that will positively impact the local development goals, activities and processes. The computer literacy training served as a basic knowledge for IT literacy acquisition and covered the following core areas: MS-Windows, MS-Word, MS-Excel, and Basic computer maintenance.
For the delivery of the computer literacy training, the Liberia Institute of Public Administration (LIPA) collaborated with the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) to facilitate the computer training delivery. As a part of the training exercises, an interactive learning aide “Microsoft Office Made Easy” was reproduced and distributed to the trainees to use for self practice following the training.
Lessons Learned The facilitation and delivery of the local government capacity building program in the fifteen (15) counties brought-out a number of issues and lessons from the various activities and thematic presentations that were centered around civic duties and responsibilities, institutional functions as well as public service performance factors. Throughout the training facilitation and delivery in the counties, a processed evaluation exercise was utilized to assess lessons learnt, message impact, objectives adherence and coordination coherence.
Additionally, at the close of each day’s training session, the trainers and support team met to jointly review the day’s activities as a way of sharing experiences on best practices, weakness in training facilitation and delivery as well as considering the need for any possible adjustment in the activity execution. Climaxing the training delivery in each county was an end-of-county training evaluation exercise undertaken jointly by the participants, trainers and support team as a general evaluation exercise done at the end of the county training program.
Following each presentation, an evaluation exercise was used to assess the participants’ level of understanding of the thematic issues, audio drama skit message and their role as local government officials and leaders.
Some of the lessons learned are summarized in the listing below. • Information sharing and timely decision making makes a leader efficient and productive; • Both leaders and citizens must be willing to change and set good examples for the growth and development of their communities, town, clans, districts, etc.; • Accountability means holding people, leaders and citizens, responsible for what they do and not do; • Transparency means both the leader and citizens acting fairly and openly for the development of their communities, town, clans, districts, counties and the nation; • When accountability and transparency are practiced, corruption will be minimized which will invariable bring about socio-economic growth; • Transparency is about the appropriate use of resources and truthfulness towards the development of the society; • Gender is about the way the men, women, boy and girl are suppose to live and do things for the development of their families, communities, town, clans, districts, counties and the country;
In the past, the existing cultural practices and traditional values made it difficult for women equal participation in decision making; • Women have equal potential in becoming a leader; • Old traditional practices, such as the denial of women participation in decision-making and other activities, should not be allowed to interfere with human rights; • Peace building and reconciliation can only be achieved when all parties in the conflict/palaver are willing to forgive and forget; • Reconciliation is slow in our country because the citizens’ concerns are not taken seriously by the leaders; • Reconciliation and peace building is slow because the root causes of conflict/palaver is not identified; • The lack of citizens knowledge of their civic duties and responsibilities brings about overlapping of functions; and. • Local government officials and citizens can together eradicate extreme poverty by getting involve in farming activities.
Liberia Institute of Public Administration * Training . Research . Consultancy . Information * L i P A LIBERIA INSTITUTE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION Post Office Box 9045 North Gibson Street, Mamba Point Monrovia, Liberia Focal Person Local Government Capacity Building Programme P. EmMersyn Harris Deputy Director-General (Administration & Management) North Gibson Street Cell: (+231) 06 538 626, 07 781 3803 Mamba Point, P. O. Box 9045 E-mail:palmaseh@yahoo.com Monrovia, Liberia, W.A emmersyn.harris@lipa.gov.lr Website:www.lipa.gov.lrTel: (+231) 07 736 0759 – Ext.102
