Dear HIFA colleagues,
SUPPORT-SYSTEMS co-investigator Unni Gopinathan invited us to reflect on inclusiveness, accountability and other key values: "We would also be very interested in hearing whether our primary focus on 'inclusiveness' and 'accountability' miss other key values that civil society participation contributes to." https://www.hifa.org/dgroups-rss/support-systems-13-introduction-and-som...
With this in mind, I reviewed a paper that I circulated at the beginning of our discussion:
https://www.hifa.org/dgroups-rss/support-systems-1-open-public-meetings-...
The title of the paper is 'Using Open Public Meetings and Elections to Promote Inward Transparency and Accountability: Lessons From Zambia' and the authors make some useful comments about accountability (although they do not mentione inclusiveness). Below are some brief extracts:
'Community-led governance can ensure that leaders are accountable to the populations they serve and strengthen health systems for maternal care.'
'Meeting participation, stakeholder representation, community engagement, and responsiveness of the governance committees are key indicators of transparency and accountability through open meetings and elections'
'Two key aspects of accountability are holding elections, and holding open public meetings so that policies are informed and overseen/questioned by broad discussion and agreement.'
'[There are] 3 types of accountability: financial, performance, and democratic/political accountability.'
One of the main conclusions from the study was to do with understanding and capacity to manage democratic processes:
'governance committee members need support and mentorship to adequately prepare for and facilitate meetings and elections.'
My interpretation is that even if there is willingness to be accountable, there may be limited ability to deliver accountability. Some of the limitation may be related to individual capacity and perhaps some to lack of clarity on procedures.
Community/village governance committees are themselves examples of civil society. In addition they are responsible for listening to and responding to civil society inputs, whether from individuals or local CSO representatives.
'Stakeholders asked probing questions, especially about financial matters, and governance committee members were generally responsive to questions'
'Yet, several governance committees had incomplete reports and seemed unprepared to answer questions, thus missing opportunities to increase understanding and trust within the community.'
Best wishes, Neil
Joint Coordinator, HIFA SUPPORT-SYSTEMS
https://www.hifa.org/projects/new-support-systems-how-can-decision-makin...
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HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is global coordinator of the HIFA global health movement (Healthcare Information For All - www.hifa.org ), a global community with more than 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting on six global forums in four languages in official relations with WHO. HIFA brings stakeholders together to accelerate progress towards universal access to reliable healthcare information.
Twitter: @hifa_org neil@hifa.org
