Making Services, Plans, and Budgets Gender Responsive with CBMS: The Philippine Experience

1. Making Services, Plans, and Budgets Gender Responsive with CBMS:The Philippine Experience Celia M. Reyes Decentralization, Local Power and Women’s Rights November 18-21, 2008 Mexico City

2. Outline of the Presentation • Decentralization in the Philippines • The GRB and CBMS: The Convergence Points • The CBMS-GRB methodology • How has it been used?: Experience from the Philippines • Concluding Remarks

3. Decentralization in the Philippines • The Philippines took a bold step of devolving key governance functions to local government units with the passing of the Local Government Code of the Philippines of 1991 (RA 7160). • Devolving authority to the local level promised more Transparent, Participatory, Responsive, Innovative, and Efficient delivery of public services. • Among the key tasks downloaded to local government units is development planning and budgeting .

4. Challenges in Local Planning and Budgeting in the Philippines • Lack of disaggregated data on local socioeconomic conditions • Insufficient knowledge on priority issues / sectors • Difficulty identifying individuals and households for targeted programs • Very little knowledge of the socioeconomic and welfare status of the women and men in the localities • Limited participation of other development actors (People’s Organizations and NGOs) in development planning and budgeting

5. Challenges in Local Planning and Budgeting in the Philippines • Budgeting and planning at the local level mainly serve as compliance documents rather than policy documents • Budgets and plans have minimal or even non-recognition of the diverse needs of women and men • Gender and Development Budgets tend to be unutilized or even mis-utilized

6. The Results… • Shotgun approach to service delivery planning and budgeting • Guesswork- filled governance • Near-sighted development programming and service delivery • “Not too participatory” development plans • GAD budget tends to serve as a “cookie jar” • No means to track changing patterns, trends, budgetary efficiency • “Gender blind” local development plans and budgets

7. CBMS-GRB Initiative • The CBMS-GRB project in the Philippines sought to help solve these issues and facilitate evidence based and gender responsive public service delivery. • After a series of forums and workshops, the CBMS-GRB methodology was developed and piloted.

8. The GRB and CBMS:Convergence Points

9. GRB and CBMS: Convergence Points Point #1: Both interested in targeting & prioritization • GRB intends to analyze and formulate budgets that truly respond to the needs of those who need it most • CBMS as a tool enables empirically- based beneficiary targeting, needs identification, and prioritization of development initiatives

10. GRB and CBMS: Convergence Points Point #2: Both interested in evidence-based policy making • GRB examines government budgetary and planning documentations to analyze their impacts to a diverse set of social groupings (across gender, age, social group, etc.) • CBMS provides a multidimensional view of welfare conditions at the local level to aid policymaking

11. GRB and CBMS: Convergence Points Point #3: Both should be ongoing exercises • GRB should be ideally carried out as a periodic exercise to analyze budgets as they are formulated and as these are spent. • CBMS is done by carrying out different activities from data collection, processing, to validation and utilization. It is designed to be conduced periodically (ideally every 3 years)

12. The CBMS-GRB Methodology

13. A Quick Look at CBMS • An organized way of collecting information at the local level for use of local government units, national government agencies, NGOs, and civil society for planning, program implementation and monitoring

14. Key features of the CBMS • LGU-Based while promoting community participation • Taps existing LGU/community-personnel as monitors • Has a core set of indicators but system is flexible enough to accommodate additional indicators • Generates relevant information down to the household and even at the individual level (can provide disaggregated data across sex, age, civil status, etc.)

15. General Activities in Implementing a CBMS Advocacy and Workplan Program Implementation Dissemination Data Collection Analysis and Planning Data Processing Community Validation Database Building

16. As a policy-making tool, GRB needs a solid basis for it to be firmly rooted in local level planning and budgeting processes. Gender relevant programs need a reliable information source for performance M&E Beneficiaries of gender-related interventions need to be identified and targeted to optimize resources CBMS as a monitoring tool is lodged in local government units CBMS provides the needed data for pragmatic M&E activities CBMS can generate the needed gender-disaggregated for targeting and resource allocation Why Use CBMS for GRB?

17. The CBMS-GRB: Its Features • The CBMS-GRB is essentially based on the standard CBMS methodology • It retains some key features of the standard CBMS (being LGU-based, multidimensional, census of households) • It includes enhancements that aim to collect other key gender relevant information on different aspects of human well-being: being educated, being healthy, being empowered, being protected/ taken cared of and having access to government assistance

18. The CBMS-GRB Methodology Enhanced data collection instruments and Gender Sensitivity Training Advocacy and Workplan The Result: gender responsive and evidence-based budget programs and interventions Gender-sensitized data enumerators and supervisors Dissemination Enhanced Data processing system Data Collection More enhanced planning and budgeting module More diversified actors for the community validation exercises Analysis and Planning Data Processing Community Validation Database Building

19. How has CBMS-GRB data been used?:Experience from the Philippines

20. How has it been used?: Experience from the Philippines Escalante City is a small rural city made up of 21 barangays (villages). Population: 86,580 (Male: 51.20%; Female: 48.80%) No. of Households: 18,935 Income: US$ 4.85 Million

21. CBMS-GRB data from Escalante City: Some key results

22. On being educated(indicators on education - City of Escalante)

23. On being healthy… (indicators on health and nutrition – City of Escalante)

24. On being healthy… (indicators on health and nutrition – City of Escalante)

25. On being healthy… (indicators on health and nutrition – City of Escalante)

26. On being healthy… (indicators on water and sanitation – City of Escalante)

27. On being healthy… (indicators on water and sanitation – City of Escalante)

28. LGU Responses • Claim back the GAD budget as a first step to address women’s particular needs and concerns. • No more indiscriminate use of GAD budget • Review of development initiatives to align with the priorities • Refocusing on job creation, health and education • Integrate evidence from CBMS data to enhance planning and budgeting processes and set goals, targets and performance indicators • Make the budget process participatory and empirically based

29. Benefits of CBMS-GRB in Escalante • THE CBMS-GRB has essentially helped address these key development questions: • What are the issues? • Who should be helped? • Where can they be found? • What exactly do they need? • How should the intervention be designed? • How should this be provided?

30. Benefits of CBMS-GRB in Escalante • Greater beneficiary targeting and project costing capabilities for different interventions • Seasonal and emergency relief projects • Employment projects (identifying possible local constituents to contact for local job fairs) • Alternative Learning Systems (primarily for illiterate adults in the city) • Cross checking of development project of village leaders (Barangay Captains who wish to access city level funds) • Evidence-based GAD Plans and Budgets (deliberated upon by both male and female city department heads)

31. Benefits of CBMS-GRB in Escalante • Ability to assess efficacy of previous development initiatives • Ability of the local legislature to cross check departmental budgets for several services • Greater involvement of other community stakeholders in development planning (via the FGDs and validation activities)

32. Benefits of CBMS-GRB in Escalante • The mayor can now say “NO” to political accommodations • Enabled better synergy administrative and service delivery city departments; local “Kingdoms” can now better work together • The City can better prepare proposals for external funding or loan, partner with social groups, and with the provincial government of Negros Occidental • The city can better track department performance with the socioeconomic data they obtained • Discussions among social actors (LGU, PO’s, Business, etc) may now be conducted

33. Concluding Remark The CBMS-GRB initiative was able to carry out the following tasks: • “Create” gender responsive budgets ( versus post budget analysis) • Mainstream the concerns of women into local development plans and budgets • Allow greater involvement of women and other marginalized sectors in the planning and budgeting processes (via the FGDs and the Validation exercises)

34. Maraming Salamat!

35. PEP-CBMS Network Coordinating Team Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business StudiesRoom I-1016 10th Flr. Angelo King International CenterEstrada Cor. Arellano Ave., Malate, Manila, PhilippinesE-mail: reyesc@dls-csb.edu.ph Web-site: www.pep-net.orgTel: (632) 5262067Fax: (632)5262067