Triangulation Framework for Local Service Delivery - Philippine ...

poor can afford only limited amounts of (low quality) water, with most of it spent on vended water
requiring treatment; and the urban non-poor are subsidized more than the poor for using Level III
systems, which often get the large chunk of government investments and subsidies (World Bank 2001).
The PIDS-UNICEF Local Service Delivery Study titled, “Improving Local Service Delivery for the MDGs
in Asia: The Case of the Philippines”, provides some similar key findings (see PIDS-UNICEF 2009).
3. Some Prerequisites for Improved Local Service Delivery
To realize the promise of improved local service delivery, certain prerequisites—mainly about policy,
institutions, and finance—must be met.
First, the design of decentralization—its 3Ds (devolution, deconcentration, delegation) and/or its
political, administrative, financial, and market-based characteristics—needs to be based on right-sizing
and proper phasing of intergovernmental transfer of powers, functions, and responsibilities. The abrupt
transfer of powers, functions, and responsibilities, especially on the decentralization of certain sectors
such as health, social services, and agriculture, has created a mismatch between LGUs’ powers and
responsibilities and their institutional and financial capacities. This has impacted on the delivery of
services and public goods. In health, for example, the cost of devolution (PS and MOOE), has made the
LGUs, particularly the provinces, incapable of delivering public goods and services; hence, the clamor to
return health service responsibilities to the national government.
Second, there must be effective institutions – i.e. formal rules, informal norms and their enforcement
characteristics (to be discussed in subsequent sections). Without strengthening formal and informal
institutions, the underlying causes of underdevelopment in the country and its concomitant dismal local
service delivery of public goods and services would remain. The all-important idea here is that
institutional problems have constrained the development take-off of the country; hence, the need to
address them, including those institutions related to local service delivery. Equally important, the
institutional actors—both local and national—should be capacitated and imbued with a sense of
urgency to own up the LSD agenda as a way to make decentralization work through innovative ideas,
capabilities, and political will. With many LCEs not having the required capabilities and political will to
own up the LSD agenda, people suffer from poor quality of education and poor health and sanitation. A
Filipino child who cannot wait for improved services to ensure his/her right to a bright future and
healthy life becomes a victim of ineptitude, political grandstanding, and indifference.
Third, the 3Fs—functions, functionaries, and funds—demand no less than commensurate transfer and
burden-sharing of the required capacity-building, institutional development, and financial
sustainability. The resultant resource constraints and institutional deficits experienced by LGUs, mostly
by 5 th- and 6 th- class municipalities and their barangays, as well as the low-income provinces, greatly
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