Authorized Authorized

180 WORLD DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2016
Figure 3.17 Classifying public services and activities as to their amenability to improvement
through digital technology
1 2 3
Do citizens have
the incentive to
monitor?
Is the delivery
based on
routine tasks?
Can outcomes be
easily measured
and attributed?
YES
Examples
Cash transfers, registration, filing taxes
MORE
amenable to improvement
through digital technology
YES
NO
Family-oriented health services and self-care
YES
YES
Utility services (electricity, water)
NO
NO
Curative health care
YES
Constructing roads
NO
YES
NO
NO
YES
NO
Preventive health care, financial management
Procurement of complex goods
Teaching, policing, management
LESS
amenable to improvement
through digital technology
Sources: WDR 2016 team, based on Batley and Mcloughlin 2015; Pritchett and Woolcock 2002; Wilson 1989; World Bank 2003.
conditional on the strength of the initial institutions
and relatively amenable to improvements through
digital technology.
By contrast, services that citizens do not have an
incentive to monitor and that are less measurable
and attributable do not yield political benefits to
politicians. If the delivery of these services is based
on tasks that are highly discretionary, policy makers
have less influence over the providers responsible
for these services. These services and activities are
much more dependent on the quality of existing
institutions; improvements through the application
of digital technologies are only incremental. This
variation helps explain the differential impact of digital
technologies across the elements of government
capability and citizen empowerment summarized
in the table 3.1 and 3.2 scorecards, and why digital
technologies can substitute for poor institutions for
certain activities and can only complement existing
institutions for others.
Citizens and businesses have an incentive to
monitor private goods or services that they use very
frequently. These include the variety of registration
and licensing services offered in one-stop centers;
filing taxes; welfare payments; family-oriented
health services and self-care such as neonatal health
and patients’ adherence to treatment schedules; and
utility services like household water and electricity.
The tasks to deliver some of these services, like cash
transfers or filing taxes, are largely rule-based and
clerical, or follow a standardized set of procedures,
and ensuring the timely processing of work orders
is enough to deliver the service. These features help
explain the successful uses of digital technologies for
welfare payments, water provision, property and business
registration discussed earlier, including through
citizen feedback on service quality. It also explains the
success of various m-health initiatives. Automating
these tasks does require breaking down departmental
silos and changing administrative processes, but the
quick, easily visible, and easily attributable service
improvements to citizens can yield political benefits
that even clientelist politicians might have an interest
in supporting, though the political economy considerations
vary by activity. The mixed impact of e-filing
systems for example, reflects how these reforms can
often conflict with elite interests and are likely more
dependent on institutional complements.
By contrast, teaching, policing, and management
are tasks for which no “user manual” can be written,
since providers are confronted daily with unique
circumstances and must exercise significant judgment
on how to respond. 93 As a result, these tasks are
particularly susceptible to problems of asymmetric