TY - JOUR
T1 - Crowdsourcing accountability
T2 - ICT for service delivery
AU - Grossman, Guy
AU - Platas, Melina R.
AU - Rodden, Jonathan
N1 - Funding Information:
Data collection was conducted by Innovations for Poverty Action Uganda and Hatchile Consult, Ltd. The project was approved by the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology (#SS 3266), Office of the President in Uganda, Mildmay Uganda Research Ethics Committee (#REC REF 0204-2015) and Institutional Review Boards at Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania. Funding for the project was provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies (SEED). A pre-analysis plan is registered at EGAP (ID 20160819AA). We would like to thank Jon Helfers, Maximillian Seunik, Zachary Tausanovich, Areum Han, Hardika Dayalani, Siyao Li, and Mitchell Goist for research assistance at various stages in the project, as well as Moses Banduga and Dickens Anguzu at GAPP. We also thank our research partners at Social Impact, and our implementing partners: GAPP, UNICEF Uganda, and the Uganda USAID mission. We also thank participants at workshops and presentations at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Carnegie Mellon University Africa, African Studies at New York University Abu Dhabi, the Center for Experimental Social Sciences at Nuffield College, TICTeC (Lisbon), Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford, and the World Bank’s Governance Global Practice Community of Practice Citizen Engagement. Most importantly, we thank the Arua district local government for their interest and collaboration in implementing the project, and the thousands of residents of Arua district who participated in the U-Bridge program and our research activities.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2018/12
Y1 - 2018/12
N2 - We examine the effect on service delivery outcomes of a new information communication technology (ICT) platform that allows citizens to send free and anonymous messages to local government officials, thus reducing the cost and increasing the efficiency of communication about public services. In particular, we use a field experiment to assess the extent to which the introduction of this ICT platform improved monitoring by the district, effort by service providers, and inputs at service points in health, education and water in Arua District, Uganda. We find suggestive evidence of a short-term improvement in some education services, but these effects deteriorate by year two of the program, and we find little or no evidence of an effect on health and water services at any period. Despite relatively high levels of system uptake, enthusiasm of district officials, and anecdotal success stories, we find that relatively few messages from citizens provided specific, actionable information about service provision within the purview and resource constraints of district officials, and users were often discouraged by officials’ responses. Our findings suggest that for crowd-sourced ICT programs to move from isolated success stories to long-term accountability enhancement, the quality and specific content of reports and responses provided by users and officials is centrally important.
AB - We examine the effect on service delivery outcomes of a new information communication technology (ICT) platform that allows citizens to send free and anonymous messages to local government officials, thus reducing the cost and increasing the efficiency of communication about public services. In particular, we use a field experiment to assess the extent to which the introduction of this ICT platform improved monitoring by the district, effort by service providers, and inputs at service points in health, education and water in Arua District, Uganda. We find suggestive evidence of a short-term improvement in some education services, but these effects deteriorate by year two of the program, and we find little or no evidence of an effect on health and water services at any period. Despite relatively high levels of system uptake, enthusiasm of district officials, and anecdotal success stories, we find that relatively few messages from citizens provided specific, actionable information about service provision within the purview and resource constraints of district officials, and users were often discouraged by officials’ responses. Our findings suggest that for crowd-sourced ICT programs to move from isolated success stories to long-term accountability enhancement, the quality and specific content of reports and responses provided by users and officials is centrally important.
KW - Africa
KW - Government responsiveness
KW - ICT
KW - Political communication
KW - Public service delivery
KW - Uganda
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U2 - 10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.07.001
DO - 10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.07.001
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85051492525
SN - 1873-5991
VL - 112
SP - 74
EP - 87
JO - World Development
JF - World Development
ER -