MID-TERM PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF THE GHANA LOCAL GOVERNANCE DECENTRALIZATION PROGRAM (LOGODEP) Prepared under Task Order, 641-TO-12-00002 under the Democracy and Governance Analytical Services Indefinite Quantity Contract, AID-OAA-I-10-00004. Submitted to: USAID/Ghana Prepared by: Charles Costello Barak Hoffman Evan Smith Contractor: Democracy International, Inc. 4802 Montgomery Lane Bethesda, MD 20814 Tel: 301-961-1660 Email: info@democracyinternational.com MID-TERM PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF THE GHANA LOCAL GOVERNANCE DECENTRALIZATION PROGRAM (LOGODEP) December 19, 2012 The authors’ views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government. CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ......................................................................1 METHODOLOGY ..................................................................................9 BACKGROUND AND INTRODUCTION ....................................... 10 EVALUATION ANALYSIS BY PROJECT COMPONENT ............ 12 EVALUATION QUESTIONS ............................................................ 17 FINDINGS ........................................................................................... 33 CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................. 34 RECOMMENDATIONS ..................................................................... 35 ANNEX A: SCOPE OF WORK ....................................................... A-1 ANNEX B: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS ........................................... B-1 ANNEX C: DISTRICTS AND ORGANIZATIONS VISITED ....... C-1 ACRONYMS COLANDEF Community Land and Development Foundation COP Chief of Party CSR Corporate Social Responsibility DA District Assembly DCE District Chief Executive FOAT Functional Organizational Assessment Tool GDP Gross Domestic Product GIS Geographic Information Systems GOG Government of Ghana IGF Internally Generated Funds ILGS Institute for Local Government Studies IT Information Technology LOGODEP Local Government and Decentralization Project LUPMIS Land Use and Planning Management Information System MMDA Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies MOU Memorandum of Understanding MSI Management Systems International MTDP Medium Term Development Plan NDC National Democratic Congress NDPC National Development Planning Commission NGO Non-Governmental Organization NPP New Patriotic Party PCC Platform for Costal Communities RFA Request for Applications STAR-Ghana Strengthening Transparency, Accountability, and Responsiveness in Ghana TCPD Town & Country Planning Department UCSOND United Civil Society Organizations of Nzema East District UPN Unique Parcel Numbers USAID United States Agency for International Development LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This is a mid-term project evaluation report of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)- funded Local Government and Decentralization Program (LOGODEP), a three-year, $9.0 million project in Western Region implemented by Management Systems International (MSI). The project began in 2010 and is due to end by August 2013. LOGODEP’s stated Assistance Objective is to “strengthen local democratic and decentralized governance through civic involvement.” The project has three major components: #1: Public participation in local government expanded; #2: Internally generated funds (IGF) of targeted local districts increased; and #3: Comprehensive development planning for local districts achieved. The evaluation report focuses on five primary areas of interest noted in the scope of work (Annex A), with a set of sub-questions for each, encompassing the three components. The questions and sub-questions with their answers, which in some cases called for conclusions or recommendations, are covered in the narrative following the description of LOGODEP’s components, below. Major findings, conclusions, and recommendations are then highlighted separately for the reader. COMPONENT 1. LOGODEP seeks to improve citizen satisfaction with district-level government performance in Western Region by increasing capacity and transparency at the local level. To achieve this outcome, the project works with local governments, civil society organizations, and traditional authorities. LOGODEP supports capacity building through trainings for local government officials, civil society organizations, and traditional authorities, as well as encouraging collaboration among civil society organizations. It attempts to enhance transparency through hosting community dialogues combined with call-in radio talk shows. The main activity is a $1,050,000 small grants program for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to support interaction between citizens and government officials for all 17 Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs)1 in Western Region. COMPONENT 2. LOGODEP activities are designed to use modern spatial planning technology to prepare digitized maps to use to improve collection of property taxes (rates) and other fees such as business licenses and building permits in five target MMDAs, with the objective of using these increased internally generated funds (IGF) to provide better public services to residents. This includes a major activity of street naming, with installation of street poles, and house numbering in the target districts. COMPONENT 3. Component 3 of LOGODEP is intended to achieve comprehensive development planning for local districts in Western Region. Lacking specific definition, the evaluation takes this term to mean assisting district and regional planners to finalize and submit medium-term development plans (MTDPs) in the short-term (i.e., finalize MTDPs originally due in 2009 for all districts) and supporting the incorporation of a spatial planning dimension consistent with national and regional standards into future development planning processes (i.e., MTDPs due in 2013). EVALUATION QUESTIONS 1. What is the level of program performance in relation to proposal/workplan projected activities, outputs and results? 1.1. Are there results beyond projected achievements in any areas? 1 The 17 MMDAs have increased to 22 since the project was started. LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 2  In Component 1 key CSO beneficiaries have secured assistance from other organizations for work LOGODEP supported. LOGODEP’s work with traditional authorities has also been an impressive achievement that goes beyond the original program design. In Component 3 LOGODEP has developed health accessibility maps, and also has provided national and regional support for guidelines and manuals for the MTDP process. 1.2. Are there activities that have not been implemented as agreed on and what are the reasons for and impacts of such deviations?  For Component 2, the original project documentation describes the project’s scope for IGF activities differently from the annual workplans that followed. The original USAID project design assumed project resources would be sufficient to reach many more than the five districts ultimately selected for the full LOGODEP technology package. This has impacted the cost/benefit ratio negatively and reduced the demonstration impact of the pilot program, making it harder to generalize results. For Component 3, there has been significant evolution in the specific activities proposed and conducted, as reflected in the approved workplans, but the program has remained true to the original proposal. The two largest deviations are the lack of Institute of Local Government Studies (ILGS) involvement in training and capacity building efforts at the local level and the lack of study tours within Ghana. Neither of these deviations seem to have had a negative impact on the project’s ability to realize its objectives. The training originally proposed to be conducted by ILGS has instead been provided by LOGODEP directly, so the result has been the same. Regarding the study tours, it is difficult to say for certain what the benefit would have been from study tours to other regions of Ghana, but the efforts to incorporate spatial planning into the development planning processes are new across the country and are only now being piloted by LOGODEP in Western Region, making the benefits of study tours seem limited at best. 1.3. What mid-program adjustments are recommended?  On the assumption that the project will end as scheduled, only minor adjustments are recommended. The real issue regarding ‘mid-program adjustments’ is whether LOGODEP should be extended beyond its current end date next year. LOGODEP has largely completed its work in Component 1, as they have allocated all the money for small grants, nearly ended work with the Regional House of Chiefs, and are on￾track to reach the target for public meetings. Components 2 and 3 are being implemented satisfactorily, even if somewhat behind the original schedule. The ‘mid-program adjustment’ they need is a longer timeline. 1.4. Have the project’s institutional arrangements with counterparts facilitated or constrained project outputs?  LOGODEP’s institutional commitments have definitely contributed positively to achievement of the project’s objectives. The signed memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with counterpart institutions are one good example, especially as a stimulus at the district level. The close working relationship with the Regional Coordinating Council is another. 1.5. Has LOGODEP adopted and supported appropriate and sustainable information technology (IT) platforms for spatial planning?  The IT platforms are the foundation of the spatial planning change process, so this is a critical question. As the project is still ongoing and the IT platforms are quite new, it is too early to tell if they will be ‘sustainable,’ (i.e. maintained in good working condition; replaced when they reach the end of their useful life; well utilized to their potential within MMDA operating procedures; and driving increases in IGF and more comprehensive development planning) as planned.  In the five target districts, which the evaluation team views as pilots, the IT platforms can be considered appropriate and sustainable in a technical sense, especially given the strong support provided by LOGODEP LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 3 staff. There is no obvious combination of software and hardware platforms that would serve the spatial planning needs of MMDA staff better or be inherently more sustainable. However, the team sees serious obstacles to the Government of Ghana (GOG) scaling up these IT platforms to cover the rest of Western Region or the whole country, due to budget resource and staffing constraints rather than to technical issues with the hardware or software being deployed. 2. Is the focus of the three primary program objectives appropriate for the USAID and GOG strategy to support decentralized governance? 2.1. What have been the key achievements in LOGODEP thus far?  LOGODEP, across its three components, has made some significant contributions to strengthening local governance in Western Region. However, the investments made across its range of activities could likely have been leveraged to achieve greater results had there been a closer relationship between the activities focused on civil society (Component 1) and those focused on local governments (Components 2 & 3). For example, LOGODEP could have narrowed its civil society focus to work only in the five districts where they are implementing Components 2 and 3, and prioritized activities focusing on local governance, transparency, and service delivery.  Whether LOGODEP is strengthening decentralization significantly in Western Region is not as clear. In spite of expected gains in IGF that will give MMDAs greater taxing and spending discretion, the Ghanaian political system and its institutional structures remain highly centralized. The project’s design and LOGODEP’s workplan are designed to further the cause of decentralization, but the current overall policy and structural “enabling environment” serves to maintain the centralized status quo more than to promote decentralization. 2.2. Which activities have the potential for scale-up or continued commitment?  Under Component 1, USAID could consider continuing a commitment to the small grants program and the town hall meetings. The IT platforms under Component 2 that drive the new spatial planning process show the potential to be scaled up but only if sufficient Ghanaian resources are available to do so. Regarding LOGODEP’s other activities to build spatial planning capacity, the GOG has stated a strong policy in favor of incorporating spatial planning into the overall national planning process, especially the quadrennial medium-term development plans. The GOG has also stated a policy priority for street naming and house numbering that tracks directly with those LOGODEP outputs. In spite of near-term problems, LOGODEP’s spatial planning capacity building activities—including some form of wider technology investment—have the potential for scaling up if continued commitment from the GOG, USAID and other donors can be assured. 2.3. What opportunities or challenges have been identified in working with Traditional Authorities?  The work with Traditional Authorities, who have substantial influence in their communities, has made an unexpectedly large contribution to work in the districts by giving legitimacy to project activities and entry to the communities. Support of Paramount Chiefs ensured communities would participate in project activities. 2.4. How have community participation activities affected local policies and provision of services?  It is too early to see if the community participation activities LOGODEP hosted, primarily the town hall forums and related radio discussions, will have a durable impact on service delivery although there are reasons to be skeptical of this outcome. What is clear is that the forums and radio shows generated a great deal of public interest, especially in the more remote districts of the region where access to media is difficult. Call-in talk shows that followed the community forums also generated substantial interest. It is doubtful that such structured community participation activities will continue after LOGODEP ends. LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 4 2.5. What potential public-private partnerships have emerged, and what can be done to take advantage of them?  Public-private partnerships were not a planned element of LOGODEP. However, active networking by the Chief of Party (COP) led to active participation of Tullow Oil, LLC, a major investor in the new offshore oil and gas exploitation in Western Region, as part of its corporate social responsibility program. Local NGOs were looking for a way to engage effectively with Tullow, and vice versa. LOGODEP sponsored and initially funded the secretariat for a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) ‘platform’ that was created to maximize NGO participation, donor funding, and best use of Tullow CSR contributions. Based on LOGODEP’s support, this institutional CSR platform has successfully leveraged other financial support and can be considered as a successful public-private or NGO-private partnership. 2.6. What challenges have been encountered in working with District Assemblies, especially as to internal auditing?  Work with District Assemblies has proven to be one of the most challenging aspects of LOGODEP implementation, both for the key MMDA change agents – planning and budget officers – and for project staff working to support the change process. Interest from assembly members tended to be uneven and sporadic. Many have adopted a wait-and-see attitude, wanting to have clearer evidence of the mapping and database results and their application to property taxes and IGF. Internal auditing work has not begun yet. 3. Are the methodologies employed in the program to achieve project goals cost-effective? 3.1. What is the cost/benefit of creating geospatial databases to improve IGF sources?  The evaluation team did not have access to nor could it generate sufficient, reliable data to answer the cost/benefit question in a strict financial sense. It is too soon to determine the tangible benefits of the program, as they have not been realized yet. Developing geospatial databases does seem to have major potential benefits in both increased revenue collection and in promoting transparency and accountability. In addition, developing the geospatial databases and being able to use them well has major benefits for other spatial planning and development efforts, especially the next round of medium-term development planning. 3.2. What opportunities or constraints exist for MMDAs to be able to continue or replicate the LOGODEP interventions?  One of the major constraints is the budget capacity of the government of Ghana to fund start-up costs in equipment and training as well as recurrent costs for personnel and support of the IT platforms. MMDAs at present cannot reasonably be expected to cover initial investment costs without national government funding, although salary costs for professional planners would be included in the Town and Country Planning Department’s (TCPD’s) personnel budget. Nonetheless, continuation of an improved IGF process yet to come on-stream and its replication in other districts is a significant opportunity being created by LOGODEP activities and one of the most important expected results of the project. That opportunity is even more attractive if geospatial planning is also used in other areas such as land use planning, zoning, and environmental protection. 4. Is the project timeframe appropriate to achieve the project’s goals and objectives? 4.1. Is three years sufficient to achieve project goals?  A three-year timeframe for this project is not sufficient to achieve originally stated goals and objectives of LOGODEP. This is a design flaw rather than any lack of performance by the contractor, who has established an appropriate, realistic post-award implementation plan and approved annual workplans to date. It is clear that the main objective in Component 2 of increased IGF in the five target MMDAs will not be achieved by August 2013, for a variety of reasons. With respect to the activities in Component 3, three years is not LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 5 enough time to realize the main objective, namely to achieve comprehensive development planning at the district level. 4.2. Considering key outcomes will not be realized in three years, what recommendations, including possible project extension in time and cost, could be made?  The evaluation team offers three scenarios: (1) no extension or a six-month extension, (2) a 24-month extension, or (3) a strategic commitment beyond five years for the decentralization objective. The preferred recommendation (#2) is shown below. 5. Are outreach and communications activities of the project effective for public awareness for local development impact and for awareness and utilization by key stakeholders? 5.1. Which media have been most effective in reaching citizens in terms of cost and increasing citizen engagement?  The town hall meetings and radio shows have been effective in creating a dialogue between citizens and local government officials around issues of governance and service delivery. They have given Ghanaians a rare ability to access and engage elected and appointed government officials. 5.2. How effectively have citizens been informed of their rights and responsibilities regarding IGF?  Practically speaking, the new IGF system based on the geospatial maps, unique parcel numbers (UPNs), ‘ground truthing,’ revaluation, and new tax rates has not gone into effect in any of the five target districts. LOGODEP has plans to carry out a civic education campaign to inform citizens of their rights and responsibilities on a site-specific basis once revaluation and new rates become imminent. 5.3. Has the project sufficiently communicated achievements to USAID, GOG, and other stakeholders?  LOGODEP has been quite effective at communicating its accomplishments in the project to USAID, GOG, and other stakeholders. This is particularly true as to the geospatial mapping in the target districts and the work on improving comprehensive development planning at the district level. LOGODEP has effectively communicated its activities and achievements to GOG officials and other stakeholders at the district, regional, and national levels by proactive networking, both formal and informal. This has created greater awareness of LOGODEP’s value as a model for potential wider application in the future. This attention also has created an opportunity for USAID itself to engage more intensively with senior-level ministry counterparts on important decentralization policy reform issues. Such a dialogue could have a strong multiplier effect on LOGODEP’s ultimate impact. FINDINGS A well-qualified LOGODEP project team is in place and is implementing well-drawn implementation plans in close coordination with Ghanaian counterparts. LOGODEP’s institutional arrangements and commitments are contributing positively to achievement of the project’s objectives. The competitive grants program review process is leading to high-quality submissions, but the short time frame of the grants is inconsistent with durable gains in governance or service delivery. Work with Traditional Authorities has proven to be an important activity in community outreach and is especially noteworthy because it was not planned into original project activities or results. Reaching out to the chiefs has been important to the program’s success because their consent legitimates LOGODEP’s work in the various communities in Western Region. Spatial planning is now recognized as a critical tool for future development planning exercises. The frameworks and guidelines for creating spatial plans at the district and community levels have been developed and adopted. Planners LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 6 and others in target districts have received the training, technical assistance and equipment necessary to create spatial plans. Through Component 2, spatial planning with mapping leading to a new system for IGF is moving forward in all five target MMDAs, although only two districts are moving at the pace planned. Reasons for the delay vary across districts but are being addressed. However, the main objective -- increased IGF in the five target MMDAs -- will not be achieved by August 2013. This is an important shortfall. LOGODEP in Component 3 has played an important coordinating role among the key stakeholders supporting spatial planning in Western Region to ensure that these efforts are harmonized and use the same standards and training curriculums. LOGODEP assistance in support of the MTDPs was an important factor in having them submitted, especially for districts that were behind schedule. However, the main objective -- to achieve comprehensive development planning at the district level -- will not be achieved by August 2013. This is an important shortfall. CONCLUSIONS A three-year timeframe for this project is not sufficient to achieve originally stated goals and objectives of LOGODEP. This is a design flaw rather than lack of performance by MSI, which has established an appropriate, realistic post-award implementation plan and annual workplans to date. Based on expected project activities, outputs and results contained in the original project documentation, LOGODEP should have been designed as a five-year project. This conclusion goes beyond the IGF element of the project and includes intended results for enhancing public participation and improving district planning. A meaningful extension would have to be longer than for six months and would have to be a ‘funded’ extension. The best estimate of time needed is between 18 and 24 months, with 24 months reaching what the evaluation team believes should have been the original project design timeframe. It is too soon to determine the tangible benefits from geospatial planning. Developing geospatial databases does appear to have major potential benefits in both increased revenue collection and in promoting transparency and accountability (e.g., public posting of tax collection maps, ability to project tax base, etc.) in the use of IGF. This was a project assumption that has not yet been proved out. The continuation of an improved IGF process yet to come on-stream and the potential for its replication in other districts is a significant opportunity being created by LOGODEP activities and one of the most important expected results of the project. Its validity needs to be demonstrated. The opportunity for replication is even more attractive if geospatial planning is also used in other areas such as land use planning, zoning, and environmental protection. It is not clear, however, whether those gains are the ones LOGODEP was designed to achieve, due to the nebulousness of the expected result (i.e., it is not clear what “comprehensive development planning” means in this context). Greater formal and direct involvement in implementing the MOUs, such as team leader or committee chair roles by more senior local officials, e.g. District Chief Executive (DCE), deputy, or Speaker of the Assembly, could make commitments more effective at the operational level. The decision to make grants in all 17 districts in a wide variety of program areas spread money too thinly and frustrated efforts to achieve synergies across grantees and with the other two components of the project. The short time frame and lack of coordination with other grantees or other LOGODEP activities resulted in a program that lacks a strategic focus, other than a broad and vague effort to support civil society. Strengthening of CSO advocacy capability requires a longer time commitment. LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 7 GOG is not likely to enact major reforms to achieve empowered decentralized democratic local governance by changes to the current centralized ‘presidential’ system. RECOMMENDATIONS USAID should frame decision-making regarding possible extension of LOGODEP according to three scenarios: 1. No additional funding and no time extension or a time of extension of 6 months to carry activities closer to planned goals, but recognize that only partial achievement of major objectives will be reached. 2. A funded extension of 18-24 months, which should permit realization of planned results, especially as to Components 2 and 3, with Component 1 better integrated in the project. Support national decentralization policy development using opportunities created by LOGODEP already, feeding into the next round of MTDP and achieving national impact. 3. Plan to carry forward a USAID local government/decentralization strategy priority through LOGODEP with a five-year project life, leading into a new project focused on transparency and accountability at the local level; disseminating the LOGODEP model as a national model for the GOG and other donors; and influencing decentralization structural political reforms. Looking at the three scenarios, the preferred recommendation is Scenario #2, which would give sufficient time to prove the validity of the LOGODEP model for improving local government performance through spatial planning, with an IT platform for increasing IGF; demonstrate how comprehensive development planning can produce improved new MTDP; and increase civic involvement in both processes to achieve more democratic local governance. Scenario #1 is disfavored, as it would cut off USAID’s investment in LOGODEP at the very point when major benefits and results are close to being realized. Scenario #3 is also disfavored because evidence of sufficient political will to pursue structural reforms to transfer political and functional authority from the central government to the regional/district level is lacking. If the project is extended the evaluation team recommends the following:  Continue the small grants program. To improve the project’s internal strategic logic, we recommend that LOGODEP continue grant support only for CSOs working in target districts for Components 2 and 3, and in areas related to government oversight, transparency, and service delivery. This should also include short￾term technical assistance to COLANDEF and the CSR platform at their request, as this has been an important factor in leveraging additional funding for participating CSOs.  Continue to prioritize activities that have a media component, as well as town hall meetings and radio call-in shows around the mini-drama. Call-in talk shows with government officials on the line in particular have caught the attention of local residents and given them visible access to local officials.  Continue assistance for geospatial mapping through to IGF generation in the five target districts, including the street naming and house numbering activity, in order to realize more fully the objectives of Component 2.  Continue assistance for comprehensive development planning for districts into the next medium-term development plan exercise beginning in 2013 in order to realize more fully the objectives of Component 3. LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 8 LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 9 METHODOLOGY To conduct this evaluation, DI used a flexible, industry-standard approach consistent with the January 2011 USAID Evaluation Policy. DI’s approach utilized all available information while conducting an effective, robust mid-term performance evaluation of LOGODEP with a specific focus on program performance, appropriateness of focus, cost-effectiveness, appropriateness of timeframe, and effectiveness of outreach and communications activities. The team used these five primary areas of interest, and their illustrative sub-questions, posed by USAID in the Scope of Work as a basis for approaching the evaluation and ensuring that its field work was targeted to the areas USAID felt were the most critical to the evaluation of LOGODEP. DI used specific, well-accepted research methods in each stage of the process to answer each question. The evaluation primarily relied on the Rapid Appraisal approach, a technique that utilizes several evaluation methods to quickly, yet systematically, collect data, including: document review, key informant interviews, targeted focus groups, and site visits. This approach allowed the evaluation team to access quickly and purposefully the extensive institutional and historical knowledgebase necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. The team analyzed the information collected from its interviews along with recent and background documents and available data to develop its findings and recommendations to present to USAID. DI used a wide range of qualitative and quantitative information, including data sources related to IGF income, Functional and Organizational Assessment Tool (FOAT) scores, public surveys, USAID reports, and other relevant materials to evaluate LOGODEP. Before arriving in Ghana, the evaluation team and DI staff members conducted a desk review of relevant documents and conducted initial interviews with MSI staff in Washington, DC. This initial review helped the team gather comparative data and gain a preliminary understanding of the program’s goals, proposed timeframe, and implementation plan. During the desk review, the team examined both academic literature and informal publications on local governance and decentralization in Ghana. The team reviewed relevant documents about the program, including statements of work, strategy and planning documents, work plans, annual and quarterly reports, other narrative reports to USAID, and performance monitoring plans and data, among others. Upon arrival in Ghana and after meeting with USAID staff, the evaluation team traveled to Takoradi-Secondi and began conducting key informant interviews with stakeholders in Western Region. In consultation with USAID, DI chose interviewees who could provide substantive feedback on the program and its effects. DI met with key informants, including: LOGODEP staff members; representatives from civil society organizations; national, regional, and local government officials; traditional leaders; and other key stakeholders. To gain a clear and comprehensive understanding of the extent to which LOGODEP is successfully working to enhance public participation in governance oversight and accountability, DI conducted targeted focus groups with MMDA members and employees, civil society representatives, private sector representatives, other key stakeholders, and citizens who have participated in program activities intended to enhance public participation. The focus groups helped gauge the perception of the program by both government employees and citizens, and the changing environment of Ghana’s local governance decentralization. During the focus groups, evaluation team members acted as moderators and introduced topics for discussion. The evaluation team also conducted site visits to three of the five MMDAs targeted for LOGODEP local government assistance (Prestea Huni Valley, Tarkwa, and Shama), and one “control” MMDA (Jomoro) that has not received LOGODEP assistance but is otherwise very similar to the targeted districts, to observe the program’s activities and its specific results. LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 10 BACKGROUND AND INTRODUCTION Ghana rates highly on most of the basic measures of democracy, including protection of fundamental civil liberties and human rights, and its recent overall economic performance has been impressive. However, the country has been less successful in achieving inclusive economic and political development. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Effective participation in making and implementing public policy is generally limited to a small political elite that has succeeded in capturing the presidency, albeit through competitive elections. This has given them access to the public resources that the constitution places mainly under control of the executive branch. Similarly, a disproportionate share of the benefits of Ghana’s recent economic growth has gone to these groups by their advantages from wielding political power. Due to the concentration of political and economic power in the office of the presidency, no sector of society can afford to remain on the sidelines from the contest for political power because control of the presidency means control of the distribution of political and economic benefits. This contest for control over the executive branch ends up dominating much of society. Not only politicians, but also those who seek access to state resources, must take part in the political process, which can foster political corruption and lead to inefficient allocation of both public and private resources. Electoral competition is the only real check on executive dominance. The two main political parties, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP), have peacefully alternated in power, but extremely close presidential elections can threaten the stability of such a political process. Since Ghana’s return to democracy in 1992, the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) has grown at about 5 percent per year, raising real per capita income from about $950 in 1992 to approximately $1500 in 2010 (at purchasing power parity using constant 2005 dollars).2 These headline indicators mark real progress in reducing poverty, from about 50 percent of the population in 1992 to just under 30 percent today, and improving access to education and health. Despite these achievements, Ghana remains poor, ranking 135th out of 187 countries in United Nations Development Programme’s 2010 Human Development Index. Economic growth in Ghana over the past two decades has been concentrated almost exclusively in the southern part of the country, which includes Western Region, and the benefits of this growth favor businesses with close ties to the political party in power. Parties reward those who finance their campaigns with preferential access to state resources, a phenomenon not unique to Ghana. In addition, growth increasingly derives in large part from natural resource exports, primarily gold, cocoa, and, since 2010, oil. A significant portion of the revenues from the export of these resources flows as royalties to the central government, which can then use them to finance its own expenditures. Local governments, by contrast, derive few direct financial benefits from these activities. As a result, much of Ghana’s political economy revolves around the political capture of royalty revenues and their subsequent reallocation to political supporters in office. Such an economic system can deliver impressive macroeconomic performance, but the result is unbalanced economic development. In particular, this pattern of development does not create nearly the number of jobs the economy needs to employ the large number of increasingly educated youth seeking employment. The growth of youth unemployment and underemployment is thus becoming an increasingly salient economic and political problem. 2 Source: World Bank World Development Indicators LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 11 In spite of its importance to the overall economy, the booming natural resource export sector does not appear to be creating enough new jobs to materially lower the level of youth unemployment. WESTERN REGION Western Region is emerging as the engine of Ghana’s economy, with extractive industries, predominately gold and oil, accounting for roughly half the region’s economic output. The growth in extractive industries presents challenges and opportunities for Ghanaians living in the region. On the positive side, gold mining and oil production will stimulate the economy and bring many new jobs to Western Region. In addition, investment in the region’s infrastructure will improve its degraded road network, and the natural gas processing plant in Atuabo will greatly expand its electricity network. Nevertheless, extractive industries pose threats to local populations that can sometimes outweigh their benefits. Ensuring that Ghanaians living in Western Region are beneficiaries of its oil and mineral wealth, and not victims of it, remains a challenge. The biggest hazard is environmental. Close to 60% of the population are employed in agriculture and fishing. As a result, irresponsible extraction methods pose a risk both to the environment and the livelihoods of people living in the region. While there has not yet been any major environmental damage caused by the oil industry, illegal mining in the interior is already poisoning the water supply of many communities in the region. Furthermore, rapid migration into Western Region is exacerbating problems with weak spatial development plans and woefully inadequate infrastructure, especially in Takoradi. LOCAL GOVERNANCE AND DECENTRALIZATION Almost by definition, strengthened local government would seem to support greater decentralization. In Western Region, however, as in the rest of Ghana, local governments are deconcentrated, not decentralized. Almost all ‘local’ officials work for various central government ministries and are paid from Accra, and 70-90% of local expenditure comes from central government transfers. Much of that money comes already earmarked for centrally determined projects, and major delays in funds transfers cripple effective execution. The MMDA chief executive, someone we might expect to function as a locally elected mayor, instead is a personal appointee of the President and can be removed at any time by presidential order. The President, upon consultation with local stakeholders, also appoints one-third of District Assembly members. As there is a strong political party system in Ghanaian political life with the President at the top, patronage benefits from the center are the main driver of local political action within a classic presidential patrimonial system (“constitutionally designed executive dominance”) inimical to true political and functional decentralization. While elected local government councilors choose a presiding member (PM) for each district, PMs have little more power than the officials who elected them. Local government councilors only have responsibility over tertiary areas, such as sanitation, and their fiscal power extends mainly to allocate locally-generated revenue. Although the stated national policy for more than 25 years favors decentralization, this has not translated into clear steps to implement such a policy. Constitutional reform will be required, and decentralization is considered a key issue in current discussions. However, the report of the national commission on constitutional reform studying decentralization does not outline a blueprint for major changes to transfer political authority and fiscal powers to MMDAs. In fact, it recommends that the current system of political appointment of DCEs by the President be retained in order to serve ‘national’ interests. Recent statutory changes have transferred some civil servants from deconcentrated ministries to the newly created local government service, but at the district level this did not appear to have a substantial effect on local bureaucrats’ orientation toward their relevant line ministries. The evaluation team was not able to explore this issue in great depth however, due to its limited immediate impact on the LOGODEP program, but a reform-minded senior advisor to the study commission on constitutional reform did consider it a significant measure in the long-term if accompanied by other steps that further devolve responsibility for local government officials to local governments. LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 12 EVALUATION ANALYSIS BY PROJECT COMPONENT LOGODEP is made up of three interrelated components:  Component 1 is designed to achieve Result 1: Increasing Public Participation in Local Governance.  Component 2 is designed to achieve Result 2: Increasing Internally Generated Funds of Targeted Districts.  Component 3 is designed to achieve Result 3: Comprehensive Development Planning for Local Districts Achieved. Overall, the three components are meant to interrelate synergistically to advance USAID/Ghana’s strategic objective of “Strengthened Democratic and Decentralized Governance through Civic Involvement.” The graphic below illustrates this relationship nicely. Figure 1: LOGODEP Chart Illustrating How its Three Components Interact to Achieve USAID’s Strategic Objective COMPONENT 1: PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT ENHANCED Component 1 addresses an important problem in Western Region of low citizen participation and influence in local governance. Ghanaians living there are clearly dissatisfied with the performance of their local governments, demonstrated clearly by a LOGODEP-commissioned citizen perception survey in 2010 showing that most citizens in Western Region hold their MMDAs in very low regard: LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 13  73% said they mistrusted the presiding member of their MMDA and 69% said they mistrusted their own elected assembly representative.  63% were dissatisfied with the performance of their MMDA.  69% said their MMDA did a bad or very bad job of providing citizens with budget information.  60% said their MMDA was doing a bad or very bad job in using local revenue for public services. One of LOGODEP’s core goals—the focus of Component 1—is to improve satisfaction with MMDA performance in Western Region through increasing capacity and transparency at the local level. To accomplish this outcome, LOGODEP mainly supports capacity building through trainings for local government officials, civil society organizations, and traditional authorities. It also encourages collaboration among civil society organizations and seeks to improve the relationship between them and the oil industry. It attempts to enhance transparency in Western Region through hosting community dialogues combined with call-in radio talk shows. LOGODEP also prioritizes grants to NGOs that facilitate the flow of information between citizens and government officials. Component I has four main elements. SMALL GRANTS Designed to improve the capacity of civil society to provide services as well as advocate for more accountable and effective government, the small grants program follows a competitive application process. Applicants propose activities within the guidelines set by the project, which prioritize grants focusing on transparency and accountability of local government structures; public participation in local governance; increasing participation of women in local governance; and building the capacity of umbrella NGOs, (i.e., those that can make sub-grants to smaller NGOs under their ”umbrella”). LOGODEP prefers to support pilot activities that have the potential to scale-up if they are effective. Thus far, LOGODEP has funded 26 projects and approved eight others. TRADITIONAL AUTHORITIES Traditional authorities wield substantial informal influence in their communities as well as certain formal powers, especially over land use and ownership and over chieftaincy succession. To help traditional authorities carry out their responsibilities more effectively, LOGODEP has conducted a series of capacity building training sessions for paramount chiefs, working through the Regional House of Chiefs. This assistance is also designed to achieve ‘buy in’ by the chiefs for the other activities of the project, especially street naming and numbering leading to better collection of IGF under Component 2. COMMUNITY DIALOGUE LOGODEP engages in direct efforts to encourage public participation through its community dialogue activities The key components are community meetings combined with radio dialogues focusing on local issues, which bring together local government officials and civil society organizations to seek solutions to self-defined local problems. CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY PLATFORM LOGODEP has helped facilitate meetings among NGOs concerned about the impact of oil extraction on the environment, communities in Western Region, and oil companies working there. Specifically, LOGODEP assisted Community Land and Development Foundation (COLANDEF) to develop a Corporate Social Responsibility dialogue ‘platform’ for interested NGOs and oil companies, essentially a venue or meeting space that brings together diverse stakeholders all engaged in providing, supporting, or monitoring development benefits from the extraction of oil in Western Region. The project initially funded a secretariat that now has other, longer-term donor funding. COMPONENT 2: INTERNALLY GENERATED FUNDS (IGF) OF TARGETED LOCAL DISTRICTS INCREASED LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 14 Component 2 activities are designed to use modern spatial planning approaches and technology to improve collection of property taxes (rates) and other fees such as business licenses and building permits in targeted MMDAs, with the objective of using increased revenues to provide better public services to residents. This should not only improve the performance of democratic local government but also increase its legitimacy with local citizens as well as their willingness to pay more taxes. These locally generated or ‘own-source’ revenues are referred to in LOGODEP as IGF.3 LOGODEP works with local TCPD planners to create accurate digital maps of major settlement areas from high￾resolution aerial photographs that they can then utilize for spatial planning. Under Component 2 the primary purpose of such mapping is to allow MMDA planners and budget and revenue officers to assign UPNs to individual parcels of land and aggregate them into an updated property tax roll, although many other uses become possible as well. Component 2 is arguably the most important element of LOGODEP, as the expected increase in IGF collection based on the new mapping technology is what justifies the heavy investment made in equipment and training of staff. Component 1 is a supporting element, helping civil society to participate more actively in local decision-making, including around the use of any increases in MMDA IGF, and Component 3 is the logical extension of Component 2 by using these spatial planning approaches and technologies to improve development planning in the five target MMDAs. Component 2 includes a significant level of training for MMDA staff. Planning officers and their ‘non-professional’ staff are trained in how to create digitized maps from the aerial photographs and then how to interpret them for street naming and house numbering; creating the maps marked with UPNs; and locating taxable improvements on the land parcels. LOGODEP has provided training for budget officers and their ‘non-professional’ staff (non￾university graduates) in the target MMDAs in improved financial management, including auditing. LOGODEP staff specialists continue to assist these counterparts with hands-on follow-up training through frequent onsite visits. One of the major activities underway is the procurement and installation of durable, metal street signs, which is the culmination of the street naming and house numbering process made possible by the digitized maps prepared in the five target districts. With street signs installed, house numbering along the streets can proceed following a standard numbering protocol. In Prestea Huni Valley (Bogoso town) the street signs have already been delivered and are stored at the MMDA compound, awaiting installation in the near future. In Bibiani Anhwiaso (Bibiani town) the tendering process is underway. In Tarkwa Nsuaem, Sefwi Wiawoso, and Shama the street naming project has not yet progressed far enough to start the tendering process. District officials in all 17 MMDAs also received training in project proposal preparation, composite budgeting, and budget and expenditure control. The districts all submitted their District Medium Term Development Plans (MTDPs) for 2010-2013 to the National Development Planning Commission with assistance from LOGODEP. These activities, which overlapped Components 2 and 3, helped MMDAs directly but also laid the foundations for improved district and regional development planning as geospatial planning is expanded. COMPONENT 3: COMPREHENSIVE DEVELOPMENT PLANNING FOR LOCAL DISTRICTS ACHIEVED LOGODEP Component 3 is intended to achieve comprehensive development planning for local districts in Western Region. The program lacks an explicit definition of ‘comprehensive’ in this context, making evaluation of this 3 ‘Royalties,’ which are payments made to the national government by private companies for exploitation of natural resources under concessions, e.g. oil and gas, timber, gold, bauxite, manganese, are treated as IGF in the Ghana fiscal framework even though they are collected by the national government, pooled and redistributed to MMDAs from a special centrally-managed royalties fund. Such funds do not meet the usual definition of IGF as ‘own-source’ revenue. LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 15 component difficult. We looked to activities conducted under this component and conversations with LOGODEP and USAID staff members to establish a practical working definition. We take ‘comprehensive development planning’ to mean assisting district and regional planners to finalize and submit MTDP in the short-term (i.e., finalize MTDPs originally due in 2009 for all districts) and supporting the incorporation of a spatial planning dimension consistent with national and regional standards into future development planning processes (i.e., MTDPs due in 2013). In the short-term, LOGODEP provided targeted technical assistance and training to regional and district planners to finalize, harmonize, and submit MTDPs originally due in 2009. To achieve longer-term ‘comprehensive’ planning at the district level LOGODEP has essentially pursued two tracks simultaneously: (1) district-level activities that build and utilize local officials’ capacity for spatial planning in five target districts and (2) regional- and national-level activities that work to develop and harmonize national guidelines for spatial and development planning among various stakeholders and achieve buy-in for local planning activities. Like Component 2, Component 3 activities are aimed at building the capacity of MMDAs to undertake development-planning activities, with a significant emphasis on adding a spatial component to the existing planning processes. This component is designed to build on the efforts of Component 2, which essentially serves as a hands￾on practice for an intensive spatial planning exercise with major development benefits (i.e., increased IGF). A related focus area of Component 3 activities is to support the integration of spatial planning activities at the MMDA, regional, and national levels. Combined, the new spatial planning capacity that LOGODEP is supporting at the MMDA level and the new avenues for communication, collaboration, and standardization that LOGODEP is working to develop between MMDAs and their regional and national counterparts should allow targeted MMDAs to develop comprehensive multi-year development plans that incorporate local spatial planning inputs following the TCPD’s new spatial planning model (e.g., Spatial Development Frameworks, Structure Plans, and Local Plans) and that correspond to proposed development projects across all sectors.4 The initial focus of activities under Component 3 was on supporting the medium-term development planning processes for 2010 through 2013 for all 17 MMDAs in Western Region. LOGODEP conducted a series of training sessions and provided targeted technical assistance planning staff members in all 17 MMDAs. By January 2012 all 17 MMDAs had submitted their MTDPs to the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), meeting a key performance indicator for Component 3 in LOGODEP’s performance monitoring plan. LOGODEP assistance in support of the MTDPs was an important factor in having them submitted, especially for those districts that were well behind schedule. The primary longer-term focus of LOGODEP activities under Component 3 is strengthening spatial planning capability at the district level and supporting the development and rollout of national level guidelines, systems, and standards for spatial planning for the upcoming medium-term development planning process for 2014 to 2017. The objective is to harmonize district activities with national efforts so they can be used as effective pilots for these new systems and standards (e.g., TCPD Spatial Planning Guidelines and National Decentralization Action Plan). Activities focused at the district level have included training sessions on using MapMaker (a geographic information systems (GIS) software package adopted for spatial planning by the TCPD), the Land Use and Planning Management Information System (LUPMIS) for land use management developed by the TCPD, and basic skills for utilizing GIS for land and development planning; and the development of a spatial planning roadmap for each district that included a MOU laying out specific roles and responsibilities of LOGODEP, the District Assembly, the RCC, and TCPD. 4 For more information on the new spatial planning model see: Ministry of Environment, Science and Technology, Town and Country Planning Department, “The New Spatial Planning Model Guidelines,” November 2011. LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 16 Activities at both the regional and national levels have focused on developing forums for collaboration among the many different stakeholders working on spatial planning in Western Region; supporting the finalization and adoption of national guidelines and standards for spatial planning for development and street addressing; and maintaining effective relationships with political leaders, traditional authorities, senior bureaucrats, and civil society leaders at the regional and national levels. These efforts are all designed to push the spatial planning agenda forward effectively in Western Region and overcome political or bureaucratic roadblocks as they arise. An important demonstration of the effectiveness of spatial planning for development (beyond IGF) was the Health Accessibility Maps that LOGODEP developed in coordination with the Regional Health Directorate and other Ghanaian government stakeholders, the USAID Global Health team, and other donors and stakeholders. These accessibility maps integrated GIS positions of all hospitals, clinics, community-based health planning and services , and other health facilities in Western Region with major road data to visually show the distribution of health facilities and the length of time required to access urgent care for citizens across the region (through heat maps). LOGODEP then publicized these maps, which clearly show what districts and communities lack necessary health access. The goal is that these would serve as effective advocacy tools for planning future health facilities. LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 17 EVALUATION QUESTIONS The evaluation questions posed in the statement of work and our answers to them are the framework for most of this report. We try to answer each question fully with cross-references, as necessary, to other related questions where the issue is covered in more detail. Following this section on evaluation questions, we highlight major findings, conclusions and recommendations separately to assist readers. 1. PROGRAM PERFORMANCE IN RELATION TO PROPOSAL/WORKPLAN PROJECTED ACTIVITIES, OUTPUTS AND RESULTS: 1.1 HAS LOGODEP DELIVERED RESULTS OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS BEYOND PROJECTED ACHIEVEMENTS IN ANY AREAS? LOGODEP can claim several accomplishments beyond those projected or anticipated by the project design. Perhaps LOGODEP’s most visible success beyond its program activities is that key civil society beneficiaries, specifically COLANDEF, Platform for Costal Communities (PCC), and United Civil Society Organizations of Nzema East District (UCSOND), have secured assistance from other organizations for work LOGODEP initially supported. COLANDEF was the main NGO LOGODEP worked with to create the CSR platform. Global Communities5 and Strengthening Transparency, Accountability and Responsiveness in Ghana (STAR-Ghana), arguably the most competitive Ghanaian civil society support fund, are supporting COLANDEF’s execution of it. PCC and UCSOND are also receiving support from STAR-Ghana. PCC is a particularly exceptional case since the organization has only existed since 2010. Although LOGODEP cannot take full credit for these achievements, its capacity building efforts and its high standards of engagement certainly helped these organizations be in the position to take advantage of other funding opportunities. During our focus group with 13 grantees, most believed that LOGODEP’s application process was as competitive as STAR-Ghana’s. LOGODEP’s work with traditional authorities has also been an impressive achievement that goes beyond the original program design. We discuss this further below, but LOGODEP’s emphasis on reaching out to the chiefs and involving them in all aspects of the project has done an enormous amount to legitimate LOGODEP’s work and that of its partners. LOGODEP’s Chief of Party deserves significant credit for placing a high priority on reaching out to and securing buy-in from the chiefs for all of LOGODEP’s activities. The chieftaincy remains a central political and social institution throughout Western Region and programs that do not have the support of chiefs are often difficult to implement. By contrast, support from the chiefs often can be an important element in program success due to respect they command in their communities. For example, LOGODEP involves chiefs in all its community meetings to the extent possible. Having the chiefs convene village meetings ensured a far larger turnout and more serious consideration of the issues than if LOGODEP would have held the forums without them. LOGODEP also involves local chiefs in the street naming process in its target MMDAs under components 2 and 3. LOGODEP has also achieved results at the regional and national levels beyond the initial design of the project in institutionalizing the use of spatial planning for development and working with other development stakeholders (notably in the healthcare sector) to demonstrate the power of using maps to analyze development problems and of integrating maps into development plans. At the national level LOGODEP has been heavily involved in the finalization of policies and guidelines that will serve to institutionalize and standardize best practices for spatial development planning throughout the country, including the Ministry of Local and Rural Development’s Street Naming and Property Addressing Policy (November 2011) and Street Naming and Property Addressing Operational Guide (November 2011) and the TCPD’s Manual for the Preparation of Spatial Plans (November 2011). At the regional level, LOGODEP’s work with the Regional Health Directorate to produce health accessibility maps for each 5 Formerly Cooperative Housing Foundation LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 18 district in Western Region is a significant achievement beyond initial project plans and could serve as a model for further collaboration with development stakeholders (including other USAID technical teams) focused on other technical areas, such as food security, education, or economic development. Further, at the regional level LOGODEP has been invited to participate in Western Regional Spatial Development Framework Project Oversight Committee, a coordination effort of the RCC chaired by Deputy Regional Minister Emilia Arthur. LOGODEP, and especially COP Peter Fricker, is widely viewed as a trusted partner and “apolitical” voice, opening the door for it to leverage its participation in this committee into region-wide gains in spatial planning and local development. 1.2 WHICH ACTIVITIES HAVE NOT BEEN IMPLEMENTED AS AGREED UPON IN THE COOPERATIVE AGREEMENT AND WORK PLANS? WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR, AND IMPACTS, OF ANY DEVIATIONS? With respect to Component 1, the team did not identify deviations from the work plan that are impeding it in a material way. There have been some delays, however. Most notably, LOGODEP did not begin disbursing grants until near the end of the first year of the program. However, with nearly a year left in the program they have already allocated all of the small grant funds, and the vast majority of small grant recipients will have concluded their projects by the end of the third year. Currently 60% of recipients are on-track. While this is below the target of 85%, the shortfall is likely to be temporary. In particular, the pre-financing/reimbursement requirement for Fixed￾Obligation Grants is often a challenge for cash-strapped NGOs used to receiving support ahead of activities. Likewise, the organization has largely finished its trainings for the Regional House of Chiefs and is only providing limited technical support to COLANDEF for the corporate social responsibility platform. Finally, they are on track to conclude the town hall meetings prior to the end of the third year of the program. With respect to the local government components, the original Request for Applications (RFA), MSI’s Technical Proposal and the signed Cooperative Agreement all describe the project’s scope for IGF activities differently from the subsequent annual workplans. That is to say, it appears the original USAID project design assumed that project resources would be sufficient to reach more than the five districts ultimately agreed upon and selected as the focus of Components 2 and 3. LOGODEP did work with all 17 districts to help them complete and submit their MTDPs as well as training in budgeting and project proposal preparation. It is not entirely clear to us what process was followed to reduce the number of MMDAs to be covered from earlier expectations. However, based on USAID approval of LOGODEP’s annual workplans and PMP, we assume that the five MMDAs represent the total number in which the project is committed to produce results for Components 2 and 3. As discussed elsewhere in this report, even for the five target districts the final result of Component 2 (increased IGF due to spatial planning activities) will not be realized in the current project timeframe of three years. The primary explanation for this projected delay seems to be that a ‘best practices’ model, which we believe MSI is trying to put into place, requires a systematic approach with a timeline longer than 36 months. Summarizing this process in linear fashion by stages, it requires: (1) needs assessment and stakeholder consultations; (2) MMDA selection process; (3) ‘sensitization’ of community stakeholders to achieve ‘buy-in’; (4) posting of planning officers (if necessary) and training for them and budget officers; (5) purchase and installation of hardware and software and of appropriate aerial photography and training of staff in their use; (6) production of detailed digitized maps and creation of layers for parcels, streets, and building locations using the maps; (7) further ‘sensitization’ within the community for the process of naming of streets, installation of street signs, and numbering of houses following a set pattern; (8) physical installation of street signs and numbering of buildings; (9) ‘ground truthing’ the structures shown on the maps by site visits; (10) revaluation of taxable properties6 to establish an updated property tax roll; 6 Under Ghanaian property tax law only improvements are taxable, not land and improvements. LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 19 (11) decisions by the District Assembly to set the property tax rate7 and levy the tax; and (12) notices to taxpayers, any necessary follow-up by tax collectors, and subsequent payment by taxpayers. Specific timelines for this process have varied widely across the target MMDAs mostly due to different levels of political buy-in from MMDA members, DCEs, and local bureaucrats. The two MMDAs that are furthest along in this process – Prestea Huni Valley (Bogoso town) and Bibiani Anhwiaso Bekwai (Bibiani town) – have produced maps, assigned UPNs, and verified the accuracy of the data, but they are just at the point of beginning revaluation and District Assemblies have not yet set new tax rates. In Bogoso street signs have been purchased and delivered and will be installed in the near future. In Bibiani the tendering process for street signs is in progress. Tax notices are due to go out at the beginning of the next calendar year, and thus it is unlikely that presumed higher tax rates will go into effect for 2013 (with the possible exception of Bogoso) and generate any higher IGF revenues before the scheduled end of LOGODEP. The other three MMDAs are all further back along this timeline. In Tarkwa Nsuaem (Tarkwa town) the entire process has taken longer to get rolling and is therefore behind schedule. In Shama problems with the quality of the aerial photographs and the printing equipment have put the process behind schedule. What this means is that the ‘slower but acceptable,’ even desirable, pace of implementation of Component 2 will not yield planned IGF results within the three-year life of LOGODEP, with negative impact on project objectives and results. Nonetheless, the original Cooperative Agreement shows completion of all activities necessary to generating new IGF within the three-year period, including a PMP target of a 30% increase in IGF in the selected districts. In that strict sense, LOGODEP is not meeting targets. The annual workplans for the first two years more accurately reflect actual conditions on the ground. Thus, major expected results for Component 2 will not be realized by September 2013 when the project is due to end. Inputs will be far advanced, but achieving outcomes will not be seen. This has obvious implications for consideration of a possible time extension of LOGODEP, which are discussed further in answering the evaluation question on that specific issue. An extension could be for time only (‘no cost’) or for more time with additional incremental funding (‘funded’). With respect to Component 3, although there has been significant evolution in the specific activities proposed and conducted, as reflected in the work plans for Year 1 and Year 2 approved by USAID, the program has remained true to the approach proposed in the Cooperative Agreement in improving comprehensive development planning at the district level. The two largest deviations are (1) the lack of ILGS involvement in training and capacity building efforts at the local level, and (2) the lack of study tours within Ghana. It was not entirely clear why ILGS was not involved in conducting the training sessions and skills workshops on GIS technology and development planning implemented by LOGODEP, but nonetheless the training necessary to build district officials’ abilities to engage in spatial planning did take place. Similarly, LOGODEP has not conducted study tours for district officials, as described in the Cooperative Agreement, but this deviation seems to be with USAID’s support because it approved LOGODEP’s work plans for Year 1 and Year 2 that did not propose any study missions. 1.3 WHAT MID-TERM PROGRAM ADJUSTMENTS ARE RECOMMENDED FOR LOGODEP TO IMPROVE THE PROGRAM’S EFFECTIVENESS? The project is well beyond its mid-point and due to end in September 2013, thus limiting the scope and range of ‘mid-term program adjustments’ the team feels would be valuable. Nonetheless, we see value in minor program adjustments between now and the end of the project (unless extended) set for September 2013. These comments assume that the project will end as scheduled. We address the issue of whether LOGODEP should be extended under the specific question raising it, below. 7 In Ghana ‘rate’ is the term used for the tax itself rather than its customary usage in the U.S. to refer to the percentage or ratio of tax to assessed valuation of the property. LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 20 While we note several program design flaws in the following section, we do not recommend any major mid￾program adjustments for Component 1 because, at this point in the program, there are not many material changes LOGODEP can make. The program has already allocated nearly all of the funds for the small grants program, by far the largest area of activity under Component 1, and because we find its oversight over the grantees to be working well, the team does not recommend any changes. In addition, since STAR-Ghana is now implementing the CSR platform, LOGODEP’s activities in that area are limited to occasional technical support, at the request of COLANDEF. Finally, LOGODEP has largely finished its work with the regional House of Chiefs. For Component 2 we suggest possible changes in the leadership roles in the local teams set up in the five target MMDAs in our discussion addressing the USAID’s question about institutional arrangements, below. Issues of bureaucratic hierarchy and the current focus on providing technical assistance and coaching primarily to recently hired, young MMDA staff can be rebalanced to include an equal focus on involving senior MMDA decision-makers and other senior stakeholders with de facto veto power. For Component 3 we do not suggest any specific “mid-term” adjustments that could be made that would substantively affect program outcomes within the current timeframe. 1.4 REGARDING PROJECT COUNTERPARTS – HAVE THE PROJECT’S ESTABLISHED INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS AND COMMITMENTS (PARTICULARLY WITH MMDAS) FACILITATED OR CONSTRAINED PROJECT OUTPUTS? LOGODEP’s institutional arrangements and commitments have definitely contributed positively to the achievement of its objectives. LOGODEP’s stakeholder outreach at the initiation of the project was also a positive factor. It created awareness of the project and increased the level of participation by civic groups and other governmental and private sector entities, including traditional authorities. A retreat sponsored by LOGODEP brought many of these groups together for consciousness-raising activities and coordinated efforts. Institutionally, the project inserted itself well into local networks as opposed to working on its own in isolation. Under Component 1 LOGODEP has three main institutional arrangements, all of which appear to be working well. By far the most important one LOGODEP has initiated for this part of the program is its work with the Regional House of Chiefs. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of getting the consent of chiefs for executing local projects effectively in Western Ghana, as we discussed above. As a result, LOGODEP’s successful outreach to the chiefs in Western Region has been absolutely essential for its capacity to conduct its entire range of programs effectively. LOGODEP‘s institutional arrangement with COLANDEF to produce the CSR platform also has been a success. The report has already addressed the positive aspects of this relationship. Similarly, the signing of MOU among project counterparts – LOGODEP, national-level Ministry of Environment, Science & Technology’s Town & Country Planning Department, the RCC in Western Region, and the five MMDAs – to guide LOGODEP assistance under components 2 and 3 is a best practice that effectively formalized the commitments made by all stakeholders. In this case, the MOU even included a budget that showed resource allocations to support the project. The TCPD also made a commitment to assign a professional planning officer to each participating MMDA that was a condition for LOGODEP assistance, especially the provision of expensive equipment. TCPD met its commitment. The formal institutional link to the central offices of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development via the MOUs has definitely been beneficial to the project. Not only does it give the COP greater leverage at the regional and local levels, it also has opened the door for a skillful and respected COP, to engage in policy dialogue at the national level with potential country-wide impacts well beyond those called for in the Cooperative Agreement. In the five target MMDAs, the project helped to establish teams designed to introduce spatial planning to assembly members and municipal staff, especially the budget officers, who received financial management training to complement their work with the planning officers and their use of the new technology. In effect, the planning and LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 21 budget officers as team leaders became partners in sensitizing the rest of the local participants to the benefits of spatial planning and inserting it into MMDA workflows and planning/budget cycles. Within the local environment the DCE, a presidential political appointee, is the most important executive position and the key decision-maker. Although the DCEs were signatories to the MOUs, we found that their interest in and commitment to project activities varied considerably from one location to another, affecting the pace and quality of project implementation. The professional planning officers were in all cases young, junior officers with limited government work service, but they along with the budget officers were expected to be the principal ‘change agents’ in this process. They sometimes had difficulty in getting the attention and support they needed within the hierarchy, particularly at the DCE or deputy level, to speed up the change process and make optimal use of the new technology. Some officers displayed special enthusiasm and interpersonal skills that helped to overcome this ‘pecking order’ problem, but others did not. 1.5 HAS THE PROJECT ADOPTED AND SUPPORTED APPROPRIATE AND SUSTAINABLE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PLATFORMS (I.E. HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE FOR SPATIAL PLANNING) WITHIN THE PROJECT ACTIVITIES? This is a critically important question to assess the performance of LOGODEP under components 2 and 3, as the IT platforms are the foundation of the spatial planning change process, but it is a difficult question to answer definitively. As the project is still ongoing and the IT platforms are quite new, it is too early to tell if they will be ‘sustainable,’ i.e. maintained in good working condition; replaced when they reach the end of their useful life; well utilized to their potential within MMDA operating procedures; and driving increases in IGF and more comprehensive development planning as planned. By definition, if the IT platforms become ineffective or inoperable, they must be considered ipso facto as inappropriate as well as unsustainable. Again, it is too early to tell by that metric of appropriateness. The real issue posed by this evaluation question is whether the sophisticated, expensive equipment, technology and staff training chosen for LOGODEP appears at this stage of the project to have been a wise choice given the much less sophisticated level of current MMDA operations, overall management and staff skill sets, and operating budget limitations. In other words, are these IT platforms too ‘high tech’ for the operating environment into which they are being introduced? We believe that it remains too early to provide a definitive answer. However, we will provide a qualified forward-looking assessment based on the best judgment of the evaluators after having visited field sites and having interviewed key informants and participants. The premise of a pilot project such as this is that the technology package can be replicated in similarly situated districts. With respect to the IT platform, LOGODEP works in only five of Western Region’s MMDAs. It does not appear likely to us that the Ghanaian government will have the means in the near future to post professional planning officers in 22 or more MMDAs across the region and purchase and support the sophisticated equipment (some $45,000 per district) and training needed for these IT platforms. Purchase of high-resolution aerial photographs to work from is also a sunk cost that would have to be incurred for each new district. Nonetheless, the MMDAs are using the standard software approved at the national level by the TCPD (LUPMIS, MapMaker, and the new IGF module being developed by the TCPD with support from NORAD). MapMaker is cheap, and the others are free. In the three sites we visited the equipment is installed and operating, with the exception of Shama, where the large format printer (or plotter) hasn’t functioned properly but is still under warranty and scheduled for repair. ‘Professional’ (university graduate) planners are working with trained lower level staff to create maps from aerial photographs and digitize them for use in a variety of tasks, including for planning the street signage and house numbering project and updating property tax rolls for increasing IGF. In Shama, the plotter is in need of repair and the aerial maps needed to begin the street naming process are not yet available, which is holding back staff training and use of the new technology, but the equipment is on site and a professional planner is posted there ready to begin work. In that sense, we can say that the platforms are showing at least the potential for LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 22 technical sustainability by demonstrating operational effectiveness in the short term. We have discussed concerns about institutional appropriateness and sustainability given the current management and implementation responsibilities structure above. Thus, in these five target districts, which the evaluation team views as pilots, the IT platforms can be considered appropriate and sustainable in a technical sense, especially given the strong support provided by LOGODEP staff. There certainly is no obvious combination of software and hardware platforms that would serve the spatial planning needs of MMDA staff better or be inherently more sustainable. However, we also see serious obstacles to the GOG scaling up these IT platforms to cover the rest of Western Region or the whole country, due to budget resource and staffing constraints rather than to technical issues with the hardware or software being deployed. One possible ‘work-around’ to deal with the cost and staffing feasibility questions for replication of the LOGODEP technology package would be to allow for resource sharing, especially of these technology platforms, among multiple MMDAs. For example, if one planner and the accompanying equipment could be dedicated for three MMDAs, theoretically it would become feasible for some seven planners based at seven sites to cover the 22 MMDAs in Western Region. Another model is for the TCPD staff from the RCC to support tasks such as printing large maps across the entire Western Region. Obviously, travel distances and poor transportation links as well as bureaucratic rivalries would present problems for this approach, but some variations on numbers of planners and placement of equipment might be workable. Another option for expanding coverage might be to assign several planners to the regional office in Takoradi with designated supervisory responsibility for several MMDAs they would visit periodically as well as oversee online once local staff have been adequately trained. This approach might achieve cost savings that could be applied to equipment installation at each MMDA. In any case, it would be advisable to analyze different coverage options that might be both more cost- and technology-appropriate and sustainable in the Ghanaian environment than the current model. It was clear from our visits to four MMDAs and key informant interviews that the LOGODEP pilot effort is becoming well known in Western Region and generating demand from numerous other MMDAs to introduce spatial planning. Other donors also are active in one way or another with spatial planning in Western Region, and current efforts by the LOGODEP COP to improve coordination of efforts might be strengthened by active USAID involvement in donor coordination to achieve an agreed division of labor and funding. 2. APPROPRIATENESS OF FOCUS REGARDING THE THREE PRIMARY PROGRAM OBJECTIVES ACCORDING TO USAID AND GOG STRATEGY AND OBJECTIVES TO SUPPORT DECENTRALIZED GOVERNANCE: 2.1 WHAT HAVE BEEN THE KEY ACHIEVEMENTS/CONTRIBUTIONS OF LOGODEP THUS FAR IN STRENGTHENING LOCAL GOVERNANCE AND DECENTRALIZATION IN WESTERN REGION? LOGODEP, across its three components, has made some significant contributions to strengthening local governance in Western Region. However, the evaluation team believes that the investments LOGODEP has made across its range of activities could likely have been leveraged to achieve even greater results given some changes in the overall program design and the relationship between the activities focused on civil society (Component 1) and those focused on local governments (Components 2 & 3). Whether LOGODEP is strengthening decentralization significantly in Western Region is not as clear. In spite of expected gains in IGF that will give MMDAs greater taxing and spending discretion, the Ghanaian political system and its institutional structures remain highly centralized. Clearly, LOGODEP’s workplan is designed to further the cause of decentralization in Ghana, but the overall current policy and structural enabling environment serves to maintain the centralized status quo more than to promote decentralization. LOGODEP operates with realistic expectations on this front, and USAID must do the same when setting goals and measuring progress. LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 23 Under Component 1, LOGODEP has supported a number of activities to improve governance through its small grants program, such as community score cards, using local media like call-in talk shows to create a dialogue between government officials and the public, and producing short plays about local concerns. LOGODEP also has hosted town hall-type meetings, using a short movie on gender imbalances and abuse of office to catalyze discussions. In addition, it has sought to build capacity of MMDA councilors through its trainings with the ILGS, as discussed above. Finally, the work with traditional authorities has sought to enhance their capacity to settle local disputes within their area of jurisdiction, especially land. The small grants program is the largest element of Component 1, and it supports a wide array of activities. The vast majority of grantees are hitting their milestones on or close to their target date. Numerous positive impacts exist:  Call in radio shows on regional stations, such as Twin Cities FM, KYZZ FM, and Da Beat FM, generate enthusiastic participation and often include important local government officials, such as DCEs and presiding members of District Assemblies. Constituents often pose challenging questions and occasionally induce local governments to respond to problems, such as the quality of roads. People from outside Western Region call into these shows as well, seeking information on various government programs they cannot obtain in their own district.  UCSOND, an umbrella NGO that has received LOGODEP support, has proven to be an effective intermediary between LOGODEP and grass-roots organizations LOGODEP would have trouble reaching on its own. UCSOND has employed LOGODEP funds to convene these organizations, strengthen their programmatic impacts, and achieve visible improvements in service delivery. In addition, it proved to be an effective mediator between various grassroots organizations when conflicts arose between them. In one particular instance in Ahanta West District, a local organization representing the interests of bus drivers came into conflict with another NGO promoting road safety. UCSOND turned the challenge into opportunity by persuading both groups that they could maximize the efforts of their advocacy not by fighting each other, but by joining forces to seek a common goal, such as pressuring the district government to undertake much needed road repairs. The effort was successful.  The program has been successful in targeting a range of marginalized groups, including women, youth, and persons with disabilities. Youth Bridge Foundation produced an engaging documentary on governance problems in Ghana from a youth perspective. Mindfreedom Ghana helped increase public awareness of mental health issues and of the resources available to people with them through a series of call-in radio talk shows. Finally, the Central and Western Fishmongers Improvement Association , one of eight grantees focusing specifically on increasing female participation in government, performed highly entertaining plays throughout Ahanta West District around this issue. LOGODEP’s beneficiaries achieved these impressive outcomes in part due to its rigorous grant-making process. The staff does a thorough review of all applicants (and even offered trainings for those who did not qualify in the first and second rounds), the external review board is comprised of highly-regarded individuals in Takoradi that take their job quite seriously, and LOGODEP performs extensive oversight over each grantee, including random site visits. We held a focus group with the external review committee. They spoke quite favorably about the program. While this might seem self-serving, we also had an opportunity to attend a grant review session and were able to observe how seriously they approached it. Most likely, Component 1 could have done more to improve local governance if LOGODEP had concentrated its efforts in a smaller amount of districts and had narrower issue focus. LOGODEP operated Component 1 in all 17 districts in Western Region. The small grants it allocated cover quite a wide array of areas, including women’s participation in government, the rights of people with disabilities, and environmental issues. Consequently, the reality on the ground of the grants program is not a three-year intensive effort to build civil society in Western Region, but rather two or three small grants in each district covering short periods of time and diverse issue areas. LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 24 The project would have benefitted from a more coherent focus, such as making it complement components 2 and 3. Thus, grants worth extending plausibly include the recipients Women in Law and Development in Africa, Youth Bridge Foundation, Network for Health and Relief Foundation, and Christian Rural Aid Network because they are working in the five target districts of Components 2 and 3. Under Component 2, the LOGODEP technology package, discussed in depth above, together with the technical assistance, training, and coaching LOGODEP is providing to local planners and other officials is making a major contribution toward enabling ‘strengthened local governance’ in Western Region. As the use of spatial planning has not progressed to the point where the project’s measurable targets of increased IGF are being met, this achievement must be considered partial and incomplete at this stage. Nonetheless, it is setting the standard for spatial planning’s broader adoption with full GOG support. Local awareness of and receptivity to the new spatial planning package appears high. Local governments should be able to use these new approaches to improve their fiscal position and deliver better services such as street naming and house numbering to local citizens. Mapping of health facilities is another example of how the new tools can contribute to better public policy and investment choices in the sector. Overall, Component 3 has made significant achievements towards its goal of supporting comprehensive development planning at the district level. Spatial planning is now recognized as a critical tool for future development planning exercises; the frameworks and guidelines for creating spatial plans at the district and community levels have been developed and adopted (i.e. spatial development frameworks, structure plans, and local plans); planners and others involved in development in LOGODEP target districts have received training, technical assistance, and equipment to give them the tools and skills necessary to effectively create spatial plans; and LOGODEP has played an important coordinating role among the various stakeholders supporting spatial planning in Western Region to ensure that these various efforts are harmonized and use the same standards and training curriculums. It is less clear, however, whether these gains in strengthening local government are the ones LOGODEP was designed to achieve, due to the nebulousness of the expected result (i.e., it is not clear what “comprehensive development planning” means in this context). In addition, many of the activities LOGODEP has undertaken in support of Component 3 have also been in support of Component 2. Indeed, in its staffing structure and program planning LOGODEP treats the two components almost as one large component focused on local government. Although the program has indeed made some gains in the area of improving (or making more comprehensive) development planning efforts and capacities in the five target districts and in the region as a whole, it is unclear whether these gains indeed represent the change USAID was expecting to see. 2.2 WHICH ACTIVITIES HAVE/DO NOT HAVE THE POTENTIAL FOR SCALE-UP AND/OR CONTINUED COMMITMENT? Because LOGODEP is focused exclusively in Western Region and does a significant amount of its work through target districts and small grants, the benefits of scaling them up can easily be evaluated. Depending on the levels of future USAID resources or its ability and willingness to coordinate assistance from other donors, real opportunities for scaling up LOGODEP activities do exist. Under Component 1, USAID could consider continuing a commitment to the small grants program and the town hall meetings. It is our view that the training of traditional authorities is not advisable for scaling up, however, because the benefits of imparting these skills to sub-chiefs—the only way to scale up these activities—appear to be far smaller than those gained by training paramount chiefs. The capacity building LOGODEP has provided for the chiefs, primarily settling succession disputes, allocating land, and managing stool revenue, pertain more to duties of paramount chiefs than those serving under them. In addition, sub-chiefs do not sit in the Regional House of Chiefs. There are some benefits to working with sub-chiefs, such as capacity building for settling local disputes, but these were beyond the scope of LOGODEP’s activities. While we support continuing the small grants program in the LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 25 event of a project extension, we recommend USAID tweak three elements of its design to enhance its positive impact on governance: (1) its short time frame, (2) its dispersed geographic range, and (3) its expansive issue focus. Extending longer-term grants to a smaller number of organizations and aligning these demand-side activities closer to those in Components 2 and 3 would likely achieve more durable gains in improving governance. The mini-drama showings, combined with town hall meetings and call-in radio programs are worth continued commitment. Having already produced the drama, the only costs of maintaining the activities are travel to the sites, and fees for hosting screenings and call-in talk shows. Due to the low cost of lengthening the program and the popularity of the show, we see great value in distributing it widely as a useful platform for dialogue and sensitization around issues of abuse of office and gender discrimination. In particular, involving chiefs in the screenings creates an atmosphere that allows for a more sincere discussion of the issues the drama raises. With respect to the IT platforms under Component 2 that drive the new spatial planning process, we have discussed their potential for scale-up and sustainability earlier in answering the sub-question about IT platforms in Question #1. Regarding LOGODEP’s other activities to build spatial planning capacity, the Ghanaian government has stated a strong policy in favor of incorporating spatial planning into the overall national planning process, especially the quadrennial medium-term development plans. The government has also stated a policy priority for street naming and house numbering8 that tracks directly with those LOGODEP outputs based on its spatial planning technology package. While we have doubts for the near-term, LOGODEP’s spatial planning capacity building activities— including some form of wider technology investment—has the potential for scaling up if continued commitment from the GOG, USAID and other donors can be assured. In fundamental ways, LOGODEP Components 2 and 3 are designed as a pilot project in utilizing spatial planning to improve development planning (and eventually outcomes) and increase levels of IGF. The interventions are (1) very resource intensive on a per-district basis and (2) are being rolled out largely by an international development implementer rather than a government entity. Both of these realities are expected for pilot projects but a new model will need to be developed in order to sustain a country-wide (or even multi-region) roll out. But even before achieving real results in development planning or increased IGF in its target districts, LOGODEP has managed to bring together a wide array of government (i.e., district, regional, and national officials) and nongovernmental actors (i.e., civil society, traditional authorities, the private sector, and other donors) from disparate groups into a coordinated network that is using a common set of policies, technologies, and training approaches to support the use of spatial planning for development. This is an important window of opportunity that USAID—already a leader in this space due to LOGODEP—could take advantage of. We believe there are several scale-up models that USAID might employ to leverage the specific gains it has already achieved in the target districts in Western Region and the lessons learned from piloting both IGF and spatial development planning. The specific contours of a scale-up approach will depend heavily on whether USAID decides to remain focused solely on Western Region and its future funding levels (perhaps along with other donors). To be cost-effective and sustainable, any scale-up plan should be based on the following principles: 1. Driven by District/Regional Demand – although LOGODEP has been able to drive the spatial planning and IGF processes forward in its target districts, if all districts had exhibited the political will and commitment of the top performers, the project would be much further along with fewer resources devoted to resolving issues and building up political and institutional will. Any project scale-up should identify and focus on districts that already exhibit the political and institutional will and demand for improving their development planning 8 Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, “National Street Naming and Property Addressing Policy,” November 2011. See also Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, “National Operational Guidelines on Street Naming and Property Addressing System,” November 2011. LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 26 processes and increasing their local tax revenue base that is exhibited by LOGODEP’s current top performers. 2. Focused on Demonstrating Benefits – already in Western Region the power of demonstration effects is clear in districts that are not being targeted for spatial planning and IGF support. In Jomoro, for example, the district planning officer and members of the district assembly are already eager for LOGODEP support because of the promise of increased IGF. Spatial planning is a powerful tool that provides tangible benefits for bureaucrats and politicians alike, not the least of which is the ability to control and disburse more revenue. Once select districts can show tangible gains in development planning and IGF, other districts will be eager to follow in their footsteps, and a future scale-up should prioritize specific activities (e.g., roadshows, regional conferences, media outreach and coverage, etc.) to drive the dissemination of information about these benefits. 3. Balanced between Supply- and Demand-Side Activities – LOGODEP devotes significant effort and resources to engaging civil society in watchdog, oversight, and other demand-side activities designed to monitor and publicize government activities and hold them accountable for effectively using the new tools and resources gained as part of LOGODEP. There is a disconnect, however, in the targeting and timing of these activities that has limited the effectiveness and power of the demand-side activities. Component 1 funding, at least for small grants, essentially has been used up before civic participation in IGF decision-making and monitoring and spatial planning exercises can begin. Any future scale-up of activities should pay special attention to the real-time coordination of efforts to build the capacity of district governments with strengthening the ability of civil society to demand transparency and accountability in those same districts. 2.3 WHAT OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES HAVE BEEN IDENTIFIED IN WORKING WITH TRADITIONAL AUTHORITIES? Although the work with traditional authorities has been generally successful, as discussed above, LOGODEP has encountered one significant problem. LOGODEP hoped that traditional authorities in the Regional House of Chiefs would train their sub-chiefs, yet this has not happened. It’s not entirely clear why and the team heard two slightly different arguments, both of which could be true. First, it could be that the chiefs think LOGODEP will pay for it if they ask loud enough. Numerous traditional authorities with whom we spoke as well as the clerk in the Regional House of Chiefs strongly asked us to recommend greater funding to work with traditional authorities, in particular, more equipment and trainings for sub-chiefs. Second, there is a legitimate argument that chiefs lack the funds to carry out trainings for their sub-chiefs. Chiefs would have to pay for these trainings out of their own pockets (for example, travel and accommodation for sub-chiefs to attend the meetings). Many do not possess these funds. 2.4 HOW HAVE COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION ACTIVITIES (TOWN HALL MEETINGS, PUBLIC INFORMATION SESSIONS) FACILITATED BY LOGODEP AFFECTED LOCAL POLICIES AND PROVISION OF GOVERNANCE SERVICES? HOW SUSTAINABLE ARE THEY? It is too early to see if the community participation activities LOGODEP hosted, primarily the town hall forums and related radio discussions, will have a durable impact on service delivery although there are reasons to be skeptical of this outcome. What is clear is that the forums and radio shows generated a great deal of public interest, especially in the more remote districts of the region where access to media is difficult. Many of the town hall meetings attracted a few hundred participants and allowed citizens the very rare opportunity to directly question government officials in public. Call-in talk shows that followed the community forums also generated substantial interest. We are doubtful that community participation activities will continue after LOGODEP ends, however. Someone needs to pay for the radio shows and town hall meetings, and it is not clear to us who this would be or whether this is an issue that LOGODEP has been considering. While we have heard some examples of short-term impacts of improvements in service delivery as a result of the shows, such as raising school enrollments and fixing bad stretches of road, the team saw no compelling examples of LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 27 longer-term results, such as catalyzing sustained advocacy efforts at an issue the forums raised. However, this is not surprising. One-off events rarely have long-lasting influences. Rather, such activities are useful for raising the profile of longer-term advocacy work and we recommend LOGODEP pursue such activities. 2.5 WHAT, IF ANY, POTENTIAL PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS HAVE EMERGED AND WHAT MUST BE DONE TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THEM? Public-private partnerships were not a planned element of LOGODEP. However, active networking by the COP led to active participation of Tullow Oil, LLC, a major investor in the new offshore oil and gas exploitation in Western Region, as part of its corporate social responsibility program. Local NGOs were looking for a way to engage effectively with Tullow, and vice versa. LOGODEP sponsored and initially funded the secretariat for a CSR ‘platform’ that was created to maximize NGO participation, donor funding, and best use of Tullow CSR contributions. Based on LOGDEP’s support, this institutional CSR platform has successfully leveraged other financial support and can be considered as a successful public-private or NGO-private partnership. In Shama, the district assembly, LOGODEP and Tullow have collaborated on the aerial photographs needed to make the maps needed under Component 2 for street naming and addressing. Tullow supported the work of a consulting firm to prepare geospatial maps in the coastal districts of Western Region as part of its CSR work and made the Shama map available to the project. However, the photographs are not of a high enough resolution to be used for the project’s purposes. This problem and the non-functional printer equipment in Shama have caused serious delays there. A meeting with the COP and staff to address these issues was planned for the week after the evaluation team left country. In Tarkwa, where we visited, a global team from IBM participating in its Corporate Service Corps was on a short￾term assignment working with local planners and other authorities to develop a detailed information management plan for the municipality. They briefed the evaluation team on their initial findings and outlined their upcoming presentation. Their ‘developmental model’ was quite sound, including civic participation; but they may have overestimated the management capacity of local authorities to implement it effectively. The work will complement LOGODEP’s involvement in Tarkwa to a certain extent, but as a one-time activity we did not see how it could lead to any sustained outcomes. If USAID wishes to seek more public-private partnerships, that objective should be discussed and agreed upon with MSI to incorporate into its Year Three workplan. If the project is not going to be extended beyond September 2013, we recommend against starting any new public-private partnership activities given the limited time available for their implementation. 2.6 WHAT CHALLENGES HAVE BEEN ENCOUNTERED IN WORKING WITH DISTRICT ASSEMBLIES, PARTICULARLY IN THE AREA OF INTERNAL AUDITING? Work with District Assemblies has proven to be one of the most challenging aspects of LOGODEP implementation, both for the key MMDA change agents – planning and budget officers – and for project staff working to support the change process. As far as we know, work with District Assemblies has not yet progressed to the point where they are undertaking LOGODEP-assisted internal auditing. However, the project has provided training in financial management for budget officers in connection with the IGF process. The District Assemblies are an important counterpart, but they do not necessarily play any day-to-day role in project implementation activities. Their support for the change process to put spatial planning into place in the MMDAs is essential at the outset. They need to ‘buy in’ if the activities are to have solid local official support in getting underway. They also have a critical role to play in making political decisions about setting new property tax rates once the planning and budget staffs complete the mapping and revaluation exercises. As the campaign for the December elections was in full swing when we visited Western Region, we did not have much opportunity to meet with District Assembly members. LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 28 What we heard from informants was that interest from assembly members tended to be uneven and sporadic. Members generally were quite uninformed about geospatial planning technology, and while some were interested in becoming knowledgeable about it, others were not. Either the planning officer or the budget officer from the implementation teams is tasked with keeping members informed and coordinating with them. Many have adopted a wait-and-see attitude, wanting to have clearer evidence of the mapping and database results and their application to property taxes and IGF. The same is true for the street signs and house numbering. The street naming and signage are very visible activities and presumably politically popular, so their delivery and installation will likely boost active support from District Assembly members. In no case did we hear of any active opposition from District Assemblies in the five districts that would block planned activities. The concern was more with keeping them actively engaged and supportive. Their willingness to take the politically unpopular step of raising taxes is yet to be tested. More community ‘sensitization’ efforts on this issue are planned by LOGODEP once the issue becomes ripe. The civic participation activities in Component 1 and enhanced development planning activities in Component 3 are also intended to engage District Assembly members in this modernization process. Greater transparency and accountability are expected results of those activities and are linked to budget and expenditure objectives with respect to IGF in Component 2. As noted earlier, the implementation timeline is not advanced enough to be able to link all three components at later stages of the IGF process or for internal audit purposes. 3. COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF THE METHODOLOGIES EMPLOYED IN THE PROGRAM TOWARD ACHIEVING PROJECT GOALS AND OBJECTIVES: 3.1 WHAT IS THE COST/BENEFIT OF CREATING GEOSPATIAL DATABASES TO IMPROVE IGF SOURCES? The evaluation team does not have access to nor could it generate sufficient, reliable data to answer the cost/benefit question in a strict financial sense. As the principal fiscal objective is to increase IGF by set percentages, if in the future those amounts exceed the cost of the equipment (without factoring in training costs), the cost/benefit ratio can be considered positive. The increased IGF revenue stream should be continuous, so it should be safe to assume a positive cost/benefit ratio over time. However, this does not take into account whether other less costly, perhaps less sophisticated alternatives might provide a better return on investment and satisfactorily meet the needs of MMDAs. The team was not in a position to consider such alternatives. In addition, it is too soon to determine the tangible benefits of the program. Developing geospatial databases does seem to have major potential benefits in both increased revenue collection and in promoting transparency and accountability (e.g., public posting of tax collection maps, ability to more accurately project the future district tax base, etc.) in its use. In addition, developing geospatial databases—and building the human capacity to effectively build and manipulate them—to improve IGF sources obviously has major benefits for other spatial planning and development efforts, especially the next round of medium-term development planning. 3.2 WHAT OPPORTUNITIES OR CONSTRAINTS EXIST IN TERMS OF MMDAS BEING ABLE TO CONTINUE OR REPLICATE THE INTERVENTIONS DESIGNED AND IMPLEMENTED UNDER LOGODEP? Clearly, one of the major constraints is the budget capacity of the government of Ghana to fund start-up costs in equipment and training as well as recurrent costs for personnel and support of the IT platforms. MMDAs at present cannot reasonably be expected to cover initial investment costs without national government support, although salary costs for professional planners would be included in the TCPD’s personnel budget. Arguably, if the increases in IGF are significant and represent a continuing new revenue stream for MMDAs, district assemblies and local chief executives will want to see the spatial planning package continued and might dedicate a portion of the increase in IGF to cover the costs incurred. LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 29 The larger question may be whether this particular spatial planning package is too advanced and sophisticated to be effectively integrated into what otherwise appear to be rather basic operating systems being used in the MMDAs and utilized for a much broader, measurable range of improvements in local public administration. It is not possible to answer that question empirically in any satisfactory way within the scope of this evaluation. Nonetheless, continuation of an improved IGF process yet to come on-stream and its replication in other districts is a significant opportunity being created by LOGODEP activities and one of the most important expected results of the project. That opportunity is even more attractive if geospatial planning is also used in other areas such as land use planning, zoning, and environmental protection. 4. APPROPRIATENESS OF PROJECT TIMEFRAME TO ACHIEVE THE PROJECT’S GOALS AND OBJECTIVES: 4.1 IS THREE YEARS A SUFFICIENT AMOUNT OF TIME TO ACHIEVE THE GOALS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE PROGRAM? A three-year timeframe for this project is not sufficient to achieve originally stated goals and objectives of LOGODEP. This is a design flaw rather than any lack of performance by MSI, which has established an appropriate, realistic post-award implementation plan and annual workplans to date. The Year Three workplan for the last year of the project will have been submitted by the time this report is written, but the evaluation team is not aware of its contents and targets. However, it is quite clear that a 12-month forward projection of the current status will not be enough to achieve the originally stated goals and objectives of the project. Targets, as modified, may be reachable. Under Component 1, even if three years were sufficient time to fully accomplish its objectives, LOGODEPs activities in this area, especially the small grants program, do not run for three years. At the most they run for two years, since LOGODEP didn’t disburse its first grant until almost one year after the program began. Second, the grants LOGODEP makes to individual NGOs are not for three years or even two years. Rather, LOGODEP has been making them for less than one year (except for two they have extended) to approximately 35 NGOs in Western Region (including grants approved at last October’s external evaluation meeting, but not yet disbursed). Some of the grants have only been for six months. While LOGODEP is typically funding established NGOs, the projects they support in many cases do not continue after the end of its support. The program’s short implementation period forced LOGODEP to move away from only giving grants to NGOs based in Western Region to permitting any Ghanaian NGO to compete for them due to insufficient capacity among NGOs in Western Region alone to implement high-quality programs. Similarly, the short time frame of the grants biased them towards supporting activities that could be carried out in a brief period of time that aren’t likely to have a strong impact on improving governance, such as town hall meetings, trainings, and workshops, over more intensive efforts to build effective advocacy campaigns at the local level, which require far more time. The team realizes the USAID funding constraints make long-term assistance a difficult objective, but we recommend that USAID/Ghana should extend its support for demand-side activities beyond three years (if LOGODEP is to be extended) and narrow the issue focus to align more with Components 2 and 3 of the program. It is already quite clear, as discussed elsewhere in this report, that the main objective in Component 2 of increased IGF in the five target MMDAs will not be achieved by August 2013 for a variety of reasons. USAID faces a choice of whether to extend the project long enough to see that those objectives are realized (in our view this would mean a funded extension of between 18 and 24 months) and thereby protect its already large investment in LOGODEP or decide to cut its losses by saving scarce funding but foregoing the opportunity to learn whether the pilot’s model is sound. With respect to the activities in Component 3, three years is not enough time to realize the main objective, namely to achieve comprehensive development planning at the district level. Notwithstanding the difficulty of parsing this vague objective into tangible, measurable development outcomes, if we assume—as LOGODEP does—that comprehensive planning means incorporating a spatial dimension into the current national development planning LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 30 process, which at the district level is embodied in the MTDPs, the window for achieving such expanded planning has not yet opened. Beginning in 2013, MMDAs will begin the process of preparing and submitting their MTDPs for 2014 through 2017 to the NDPC. This will be the only time this planning process will have taken place since LOGODEP has begun its efforts to build capacity for spatial planning in the target districts, and thus an extension would be needed to give the project a chance to achieve its intended result for Component 3. 4.2 CONSIDERING KEY ASPECTS OF PROJECTED OUTCOMES/IMPACT ARE LIKELY TO OCCUR AFTER PROJECT COMPLETION (NAMELY, RESULTS OF IGF MANAGEMENT), WHAT RECOMMENDATIONS, IF ANY, INCLUDING POSSIBLE EXTENSION IN TIME AND COST, COULD BE MADE TO ENSURE THAT KEY RESULTS ARE CAPTURED AND SUSTAINABLE CAPACITY OF COUNTERPARTS IS IN PLACE? Based on our analysis of expected project activities, outputs and results contained in the original RFA, the MSI Technical Proposal, and the Cooperative Agreement, LOGODEP should have been designed as a five-year project. This conclusion goes beyond Component 2 focused on IGF and includes intended results for enhancing public participation and improving district planning. Going even further, based on our analysis we do not think that the modified, more limited outcomes reflected in annual workplans and the revised PMP can be achieved fully between now and September 2013. The process of spatial planning with mapping leading to a new system for IGF is moving forward in all five target districts, although only two districts are moving at the pace desired by LOGODEP or originally planned. Based on the team’s field visits to directly observe district-level progress and its key informant interviews, it does appear feasible to capture IGF results and judge sustainable capacity of counterparts for all five MMDAs if LOGODEP is extended. We understand LOGODEP may have enough available funding to continue operations for approximately an additional six months beginning September 2013, i.e., with a ‘no-cost’ extension. Based on our analysis, that is not enough time to show key results for increased IGF, to incorporate Component 1 activities into later IGF management, or to have improved IGF collection factor into the upcoming MTDP exercise that would be supported by Component 3. This would dictate that a meaningful extension would have to be longer than six months and would have to be a ‘funded’ extension. Our best estimate of time needed is between 18 and 24 months, with 24 months reaching what we believe should have been the original project design timeframe. Similarly, to allow for the effective introduction and institutionalization of spatial planning into the development planning process and for there to be a meaningful opportunity to utilize this new capacity, the program should be extended to cover the planning phase (at least) of the next MTDP which will begin in 2013 but likely carry over well into 2014. Despite the vague wording of the specific result Component 3 is designed to achieve (i.e. “comprehensive development planning”), the program has largely taken this to mean building the capacity and processes for incorporating spatial planning. The next opportunity to test this new capacity is the MTDPs, which establishes a natural timeframe for an extension. Extending the program by approximately 24 months will thus allow USAID to accurately gauge the effects of its assistance to strengthen planning capabilities in these districts. Without such an extension USAID is unlikely to be able to gather data on how well this capacity is used in this important development planning process. We believe USAID could use an extension of LOGODEP (in both time and cost) to maximize the sustainability of the new capacity for spatial planning in the targeted districts (and for the region more broadly) in two ways: (1) by more closely integrating Components 1 and 3 to place bottom-up advocacy pressure on target MMDAs for spatial development plans in areas like education, infrastructure, health, and land use and to monitor progress to implement those plans; and (2) to expand communications and outreach efforts around the benefits of spatial planning at the district level to increase the potency of demonstration effects in other MMDAs in Western Region. These demonstration effects are already working in select districts outside of the five targeted MMDAs, especially in those where planning officials already have informal linkages with planners in target districts (e.g., as graduates from LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 31 the same university programs and classes). As mentioned above, we believe these demonstration effects could be made even more potent by launching a sustainable outreach campaign targeted at planning staff members, budging officers, other MMDA officials involved in development planning, traditional authorities, and civil society stakeholders across Western Region. This could take the form of supporting the development of communities of practice around spatial planning or user groups for LUPMIS or MapMaker where knowledge can be transferred to non-target districts through locally-led efforts. 5. EFFECTIVENESS OF OUTREACH AND COMMUNICATIONS ACTIVITIES IN REGARDS TO PUBLIC AWARENESS FOR LOCAL DEVELOPMENT IMPACT AND FOR AWARENESS/UTILIZATION BY KEY STAKEHOLDERS, INCLUDING USAID: 5.1 WHICH MEDIA HAVE BEEN MOST EFFECTIVE IN REACHING CITIZENS IN TERMS OF COST AND INCREASING CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT AND IN WHAT CONTEXTS? LOGODEP’s outreach efforts have been largely successful. The town hall meetings and radio shows it has hosted have been effective in creating a dialogue between citizens and local government officials around issues of governance and service delivery. In addition, the radio shows LOGODEP has supported through its various beneficiaries have given Ghanaians in Western Region a rare ability to access and engage elected and appointed government officials, as this report has detailed, which represents a noteworthy accomplishment. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that the media outreach alone will improve MMDA performance in a durable way in the absence of sustained local advocacy efforts, activities LOGODEP is not directly assisting. According to informants, the radio programs have been effective in putting short-term pressure on local government officials to solve some community problems, such as repairing roads and increasing school enrollments. But there are limits to what this strategy can achieve on its own. In particular, direct media outreach has not been sufficient for addressing more politically sensitive issues in the region, such as illegal mining, an activity that is causing serious environmental damage but is lucrative for powerful Ghanaians. The radio presenters we met told us they had a very hard time finding government officials willing to discuss the issue in public. Nevertheless, it would be unreasonable to presume a radio show alone can fight this type of entrenched corruption. Given the realistic expectations of what such types of activities can achieve, specifically generating an interest in local development issues and resolving some relatively easy problems, LOGODEP’s outreach activities appear successful. Outreach activities have helped achieve local awareness and support for the street naming and house numbering activities that are an integral part of Component 2 and its related IGF goals. Project-produced materials and an outreach campaign showed linkages between signing and numbering, for example, and public services delivery (e.g., emergency health and police response). According to LOGODEP staff, further sensitization activities are ready but held in reserve for the later stages of the IGF process regarding collection and management. 5.2 HOW EFFECTIVELY HAVE CITIZENS BEEN INFORMED OF THEIR RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES REGARDING IGF COLLECTION AND MANAGEMENT? Practically speaking, the new IGF system based on the geospatial maps, UPNs, ‘ground truthing,’ revaluation, and new tax rates has not gone into effect in any of the five target districts. LOGODEP has plans to carry out a civic education campaign to inform citizens of their rights and responsibilities on a site-specific basis once revaluation and new rates become imminent. They feel much of the effort would be wasted if a campaign is done too early, as citizens would not pay much attention or would have forgotten the message if the time gap between a campaign and introduction of the new IGF system is too great. Bogoso and Bibiani are the most advanced MMDAs, and they expect to complete revaluation and be ready to send out collection notices by early 2013. Sensitization thus should begin by January 2013 using the methods employed to good effect thus far (e.g. radio ‘jingles’, town hall meetings, posters, pamphlets, and participation by local chiefs). Ideally, citizens should have a voice through their District LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 32 Assemblies in rate-setting before new rates are adopted. Were small grants funds still available, this would be a good use of the program to advance citizen involvement in local government decision-making. 5.3 HAS THE PROJECT SUFFICIENTLY COMMUNICATED PROJECT ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS TO USAID, GOG AND OTHER STAKEHOLDERS? LOGODEP has been quite effective at communicating its accomplishments in the project to USAID, GOG, and other stakeholders. This is particularly true as to the geospatial mapping in the five target districts and the work on improving comprehensive development planning at the district level. As the donor agency, USAID is obviously a critical LOGODEP stakeholder, and effectively communicating with the Mission is essential to USAID being able to make informed funding decisions and report on the effectiveness of its support. LOGODEP has maintained an open and fruitful relationship with USAID Democracy & Governance and Monitoring & Evaluation staff members, regarding its activities. It provides regular data and narrative accounts of project achievements through its quarterly reports, and submits informal updates on project progress on a more frequent basis. Similarly, LOGODEP has effectively communicated its activities and achievements to GOG officials and other stakeholders at the district, regional, and national levels by proactive networking, both formal and informal. Specifically, LOGODEP has conducted a series of multi-stakeholder workshops on the importance of spatial planning in the development planning process to inform government (and civil society) officials, traditional authorities, civil society actors, other donor agencies, and private sector representatives about the benefits and costs. This has helped secure buy-in from key actors like DCEs, the Deputy Regional Minister, and national officials from the TCPD, as well as keeping these actors informed of the project’s progress and achievements. The signed MOUs for each target district agreed to with regional and national government officials not only served as a roadmap for activities but also for communication about program progress. Finally, LOGODEP staff members, especially the COP, have maintained strong professional relationships with all of these stakeholders, who by-and-large view LOGODEP as a trustworthy and effective provider of assistance in spatial planning and strengthening district governments. LOGODEP has effectively used these relationships to communicate with GOG actors specifically about program achievements—or roadblocks preventing achievement of specific program goals—in a way that demonstrates the program’s nuanced understanding of development politics at the national, regional, and local levels in Ghana. At the national level, this has created greater awareness of LOGODEP’s value as a model for potential wider application in the future. This attention also has created an opportunity for USAID itself to engage more intensively with senior-level ministry counterparts in Accra on important decentralization policy reform issues. Such a dialogue could have a strong multiplier effect on LOGODEP’s ultimate impact. LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 33 FINDINGS A well-qualified LOGODEP project team is in place and is implementing well-drawn implementation plans in close coordination with Ghanaian counterparts. LOGODEP’s institutional arrangements and commitments are contributing positively to achievement of the project’s objectives. The competitive grants program review process is leading to high-quality submissions, but the short time frame of the grants is inconsistent with durable gains in governance or service delivery. Efforts to strengthen the role of civil society require building relationships among CSOs, allowing them to create roots in their communities, and supporting medium- to long-term efforts to undertake advocacy and mobilization campaigns. Work with traditional authorities has proven to be an important activity in community outreach and is especially noteworthy because it was not planned into original project activities or results. Reaching out to the chiefs has been important to the program’s success because their consent legitimates LOGODEP’s work in the various communities in Western Region. Spatial planning is now recognized as a critical tool for future development planning exercises. The frameworks and guidelines for creating spatial plans at the district and community levels have been developed and adopted. Planners and others in target districts have received the training, technical assistance and equipment necessary to create spatial plans. Spatial planning with mapping leading to a new system for IGF is moving forward in all five target MMDAs, although only two districts are moving at the pace originally planned or sought by LOGODEP. Reasons for the delay vary across districts but are being addressed in all cases. Outreach sensitization activities have helped achieve local awareness and support for the street naming and house numbering activities that are a major, integral part of Component 2 and its related IGF goals. However, with respect to the activities in Component 2, the main objective -- increased IGF in the five target MMDAs -- will not be achieved by August 2013. This is an important shortfall. LOGODEP has played an important coordinating role among the key stakeholders supporting spatial planning in Western Region to ensure that these various efforts are harmonized and use the same standards and training curriculums. LOGODEP assistance in support of the MTDPs was an important factor in having them submitted, especially for those districts that were well behind schedule. However, with respect to the activities in Component 3, the main objective – comprehensive development planning in the districts – will not be achieved by August 2013. This is an important shortfall. LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 34 CONCLUSIONS A three-year timeframe for this project is not sufficient to achieve originally stated goals and objectives of LOGODEP. This is a design flaw rather than any lack of performance by MSI, which has established an appropriate, realistic post-award implementation plan and annual workplans to date. These have had USAID approval. Based on expected project activities, outputs and results contained in the original project documentation, LOGODEP should have been designed as a five-year project. This conclusion goes beyond the IGF element of the project and includes intended results for enhancing public participation and improving district planning. A meaningful extension would have to be longer than for six months and would have to be a ‘funded’ extension. The best estimate of time needed is between 18 and 24 months, with 24 months reaching what we believe should have been the original project design timeframe. It is too soon to determine the tangible benefits from geospatial planning. Developing geospatial databases does appear to have major potential benefits in both increased revenue collection and in promoting transparency and accountability (e.g., public posting of tax collection maps, ability to project tax base, etc.) in the use of IGF. This was a project assumption that has not yet been proved out. The continuation of an improved IGF process yet to come on-stream and the potential for its replication in other districts is a significant opportunity being created by LOGODEP activities and one of the most important expected results of the project. Its validity needs to be demonstrated. The opportunity for replication is even more attractive if geospatial planning is also used in other areas such as land use planning, zoning, and environmental protection. It is not clear, however, whether those gains are the ones LOGODEP was designed to achieve, due to the nebulousness of the expected result (i.e., it is not clear what “comprehensive development planning” means in this context). Greater formal and direct involvement in implementing the MOUs, such as team leader or committee chair roles by more senior local officials, e.g. DCE, deputy, or Speaker of the Assembly, could make these commitments more effective at the operational level. As the IGF process goes beyond the technical aspects of the new technology, more senior officials should take active responsibility for moving the process forward. They are in a better position to influence or direct other stakeholders than are the junior planning officers, who are being asked to assume responsibilities for project outcomes above their institutional rank. The decision to make grants in all 17 districts in a wide variety of program areas spread money too thinly and frustrated efforts to achieve synergies across grantees and with the other two components of the project. While the program will eventually extend grants to more than 30 grantees, the program lacks a coherent vision. Although most of the individual activities in the program are worthwhile, their short time frame and lack of coordination with other grantees or other LOGODEP activities results in a program that lacks a strategic focus other than a broad, vague effort to support civil society generally. Significant strengthening of CSO advocacy capability requires a much longer time commitment. LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 35 RECOMMENDATIONS We recommend USAID frame decision-making regarding possible extension of LOGODEP according to three scenarios: 1. No additional funding and no time extension or a time extension of 6 months to carry activities closer to planned goals, but recognize that only partial achievement of major objectives will be reached. 2. A funded extension of 18-24 months, which should permit realization of planned results, especially as to Components 2 and 3, with Component 1 better integrated in the project. Support national decentralization policy development using opportunities created by LOGODEP already, feeding into the next round of MTDP and achieving national impact. 3. Plan to carry forward a USAID local government/decentralization strategy priority through LOGODEP with a five-year project life, leading into a new project focused on transparency and accountability at the local level; disseminating the LOGODEP model as a national model for the GOG and other donors; and influencing decentralization structural political reforms. Looking at the three scenarios, we recommend against Scenario #1, as it would cut off USAID’s investment in LOGODEP at the point when major benefits and results are close to being realized. We also recommend against Scenario #3 because it is premature and we do not see evidence of sufficient political will to pursue structural reforms to transfer political and functional authority from the central government to the regional/district level. We recommend Scenario #2, which would give sufficient time to prove the validity of the LOGODEP model for improving local government performance through spatial planning, with an IT platform for increasing IGF; demonstrate how comprehensive development planning can produce improved new MTDP; and increase civic involvement in both processes to achieve more democratic local governance. If the project is extended the evaluation team recommends the following:  Continue the small grants program. To improve the project’s internal strategic logic, we recommend that LOGODEP continue grant support only for CSOs working in target districts for Components 2 and 3, and in areas related to government oversight, transparency, and service delivery. This should also include short￾term technical assistance to COLANDEF and the CSR platform at their request, as this has been an important factor in leveraging additional funding for participating CSOs.  Continue to prioritize activities that have a media component, as well as town hall meetings and radio call-in shows around the mini-drama. Call-in talk shows with government officials on the line in particular have caught the attention of local residents and given them visible access to local officials.  Continue assistance for geospatial mapping through to IGF generation in the five target districts, including the street naming and house numbering activity, in order to realize more fully the objectives of Component 2.  Continue assistance for comprehensive development planning for districts into the next medium-term development plan exercise beginning in 2013 in order to realize more fully the objectives of Component 3. LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 1 ANNEX A: SCOPE OF WORK The overall objective of the evaluation is to assess the performance of the LOGODEP project and the performance of the contractor since 2010 against the program goals, benchmarks, and associated deliverables. The evaluation should gather data indicative of the success or failure of specific interventions in achieving the expected results identified in cooperative agreement 641-A-00-10-00071 between USAID and program implementer Management Services International (MSI). For interventions that are ongoing and have not yet produced results, the evaluation should indicate whether the interventions are designed and being implemented in a manner that is likely to achieve the expected results. The evaluation will examine the cost effectiveness of the program, and provide technical and broad recommendations for improvements or changes in the approach and any other suggestions to maximize the effectiveness of the LOGODEP program and future USAID local governance and decentralization programs. The evaluation will also consider how LOGODEP has successfully or unsuccessfully built upon previous local governance programming and the status of the sector for future initiatives. The evaluation must comply with the January 2011 USAID Evaluation Policy, available at http://www.usaid.gov/evaluation. The evaluation will focus on these five primary areas of interest, noting illustrative sub-questions which are intended to sharpen and narrow the questions of inquiry. 1) Program Performance in relation to proposal/work plan projected activities, outputs and results;  Has LOGODEP delivered results or accomplishment beyond projected achievements in any areas?  Which activities have not been implemented as agreed upon in the cooperative agreement and work plans? What are the reasons for, and impacts of any deviations?  What mid-program adjustments are recommended for LOGODEP to improve the program’s effectiveness?  Regarding project counterparts – has the project’s established institutional arrangements, and commitments (particularly with MMDAs) facilitated or constrained project outputs?  Has the project adopted and supported appropriate and sustainable Information Technology platforms (ie., hardware and software for spatial planning) within the project activities? 2) Appropriateness of Focus regarding the selected three primary program objectives according to USAID and GOG strategy and objectives to support decentralized governance;  What have been the key achievements/contributions of LOGODEP thus far in strengthening local governance and decentralization in Western Region?  Which activities have/do not have the potential for scale-up and/or continued commitment?  What opportunities and challenges have been identified in working with traditional authorities?  How have community participation activities (town hall meetings, public information sessions) facilitated by LOGODEP affected local policies and provision of governance services? How sustainable are they?  What, if any, potential public private partnerships have emerged and what must be done to take advantage of them?  What challenges have been encountered in working with District Assemblies, particularly in the area of internal auditing? 3) Cost-effectiveness of the methodologies employed in the program towards achieving project goals and objectives;  What is the cost/benefit of creating geospatial databases to improve IGF sources? LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 2  What opportunities or constraints exist in terms of MMDAs being able to continue or replicate the interventions designed and implemented under LOGODEP? 4) Appropriateness of Project Timeframe to achieve the project’s goal and objectives;  Is three years a sufficient amount of time to achieve the goal and objectives of the program?  Considering key aspects of projected outcomes/impact are likely to occur after project completion (namely results of IGF management), what recommendations if any, including possible extension in time or cost, could be made to ensure that key results are captured and sustainable capacity of counterparts is in place? 5) Effectiveness of Outreach and Communications activities, in regards to public awareness for local development impact and for awareness/utilization by key stakeholders, including USAID.  Which media have been most effective in reaching citizens in terms of cost and increasing citizen engagement, and in what contexts?  How effectively have citizens been informed of their rights and responsibilities regarding IGF collection and management?  Has the project sufficiently communicated project accomplishments and achievements to USAID, GOG, and other stakeholders? LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 1 ANNEX B: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS INTERVIEW PROTOCOL FOR THOSE WORKING ON SPATIAL PLANNING AND COMPREHENSIVE DISTRICT PLANNING  Did you receive enough training and the right kind of training through LOGODEP to be able to work effectively with the IT platform?  Is the IT equipment working satisfactorily? Is it too advanced for Ghana now?  Do you think geospatial planning will be accepted by other staff?  What is the reaction of the DCE and Assembly members?  What problems have you faced with start-up?  (If applicable) Why are you behind schedule with the street naming and house numbering project?  Do you have any suggestions about how to make the project better? INTERVIEW PROTOCOL FOR GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS  How would you describe working relationships with LOGODEP?  Has LOGDEP provided the kind of technical assistance you need?  Do you think the MMDAs will be able to replicate the LOGODEP activities?  How would you describe working relationships with District Assemblies?  Do you think IGF will increase significantly and is it worth the cost?  What significance does LOGODEP as a pilot project have for Western Region and for the national government regarding spatial planning and decentralization policies? INTERVIEW PROTOCOL FOR CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS  What does your organization do?  What did you propose in your application to LOGODEP?  Is LOGODEP's application process competitive? How would you compare it to STAR-Ghana?  Did you encounter any problems in implementing your proposal? How did LOGODEP react?  Is it easy to work with LOGODEP? Do they provide support?  How would you rate LOGODEP compared to other organizations from whom you have received support? What are its strengths and weaknesses?  What suggestions do you have for improving LOGODEP? INTERVIEW PROTOCOL FOR AND CHIEFS  How did you find out about LOGODEP? Did they reach out to you or did you reach out to them?  In what LOGODEP activities were you involved? LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 2  Do donors and/or NGOs typically reach out to chiefs?  Did working with the chiefs benefit LOGODEP in its other programs in your community? Were you more willing to encourage your community to participate in LOGODEP's activities because they reached out to you?  Did LOGODEP provide chiefs with useful skills? What were they?  Is it easy to work with LOGODEP?  How would you rate LOGODEP compared to other organizations working in your community? What are its strengths and weaknesses?  What suggestions do you have for improving the program? LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 1 ANNEX C: DISTRICTS AND ORGANIZATIONS VISITED DISTRICTS Ahanta West Jomoro Prestea-Huni Valley Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipal Secondi Takoradi Metropolitan Shama ORGANIZATIONS Central and Western Fishmongers Improvement Association Christian Rural Aid Community Land and Development Foundation Derea Social Foundation Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition Ghana Federation of the Disabled IBM Jomoro District Assembly Kyzz FM Law & Development Associates Mercy Foundation MindFreedom MSI/LOGODEP Platform for Costal Communities Prestea Huni Valey District Assembly Regional House of Chiefs Shama District Assembly Tarkwa Nsuam MA Town & Country Planning Department LOGODEP Mid-Term Evaluation Final Report 2 Twin City FM United Civil Society Organizations of Nzema East District USAID West Africa Media Foundation Western Region Network of NGOs Youth Bridge Foundation U.S. Agency for International Development 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20523 Tel: (202) 712-0000 Fax: (202) 216-3524 www.usaid.gov