Authorized Authorized

NATIONAL PRIORITIES
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Table 5.7 Transitioning countries:
An agenda for building capable
and accountable institutions and
improving services
Technology
• Digital ID, G2G, G2C,
and G2B e-government
and e-procurement
systems
• Digital performance
management
• Targeted digital
transparency initiatives
• Digital platforms for
citizen feedback and
participation
Source: WDR 2016 team.
Complements
• Streamlining of
procedures
• Improved
interdepartmental
cooperation
• Regulatory reforms
• Public-private
partnerships for
fee-based services
Note: G2B = government-to-business; G2C = government-to-citizen;
G2G = government-to-government.
monitor, like drivers’ licenses, property transfer and
registration, and water and electricity connections,
since users have both the incentive and the ability
to provide feedback. Politicians are likely to support
it because it yields immediate and visible service
improvements without threatening elites and vested
interests. Similar approaches can monitor service
providers, facilities, assets, and public spending.
Digital platforms can also raise resources from citizens
to fund infrastructure, hire contract teachers, and
purchase drugs and educational materials, and digital
monitoring technologies can assure citizens that their
contributions are going to their chosen causes. Give-
Directly, a Silicon Valley–based philanthropy, enables
well-off individuals all over the world to contribute
funds directly to poor beneficiaries in developing
countries. The private sector has also been much more
successful in getting citizens to create internet content
for public causes. Wikipedia, Yelp, Trip Advisor,
and Amazon product reviews provide lessons for solving
collective action problems and engaging citizens
in public service delivery improvements.
Strengthen provider management through
regular small-stakes monitoring
Most services and functions in government—teaching,
curative health, policy making, and management—require
considerable discretion from workers
and produce outputs and outcomes that are difficult
to monitor. Improving these services requires strong
institutions. Digital technologies can only augment
and not substitute for institutions. Even though measuring
performance is difficult for these services and
functions, the processes of setting goals, of regularly
communicating and discussing them with staff, and
of associating small rewards, such as public recognition,
for teams and individuals in the achievement
of even imprecisely measured goals can motivate
workers to perform better (box 5.12). A survey of government
workers in the Philippines found that a performance
incentive scheme triggered improvements
in management practices through goal setting and
improved teamwork. 75 And a mobile phone–enabled
Box 5.12 Regular, small-stakes monitoring
Regular monitoring with small rewards or sanctions can be
more effective than irregular monitoring with large rewards
or sanctions. The logic of this proposition is motivated by
the economic theory of crime that postulates that the incentives
for criminals to commit a crime are a function of the
probability (P) of getting caught multiplied by the severity
of the punishment (C). While standard economic analysis
presumes that what matters is only the product P x C, the
evidence suggests that raising the severity of punishment
in response to low probabilities of catching criminals is not
credible because many law enforcement officials are loathe
to impose draconian punishments for smaller offenses. For
example, in Hawaii, revoking probation when probationers
failed a drug test was for years an ineffective strategy,
given the large numbers of violators and the impracticality
of sending them to prison for several years. But raising P
and lowering C—regular, randomized drug tests and jail
sentences of two days—deterred parole violations because
the punishment strategy became more credible.
These findings are generally applicable to other services.
Digital technologies reduce the cost of monitoring
and thus make it more feasible to give regular rewards and
sanctions. If the rewards and sanctions are small, they can
be feasibly imposed, improving performance.
Source: Romer 2013.