The Governance Accountability Project, Phase II (GAP) is a $30 million, five-year program co-financed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida), and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (EKN). GAP is implemented by Chemonics International and its partners, the Urban Institute, VNG International, SIPU International, and the Civil Society Promotion Centre (CSPC).
The purpose of the program is to provide technical assistance to strengthen democratic local governance in Bosnia and Herzegovina by dramatically and visibly improving the ability of municipalities to serve their citizens and to support a policy and fiscal framework which is conducive to accountable, democratic governance.
To achieve these objectives the project is comprised of two major components: Local InterventionsandPolicy Interventions. The Local Interventions component provides direct technical and material assistance to 41 legacy and 31 new partner municipalities to improve municipal service delivery, improve administration, budgeting and financial management, and to improve municipal capacity to administer capital improvement projects. The PolicyInterventions component works primarily through the two associations of cities and municipalities to provide technical assistance to parliamentary bodies and ministries at the state, entity, and cantonal levels of government to strengthen intergovernmental communication, promote responsible fiscal and functional decentralization, and improve municipal advocacy.
Supporting these two major components are Cross-Cutting Initiatives, including efforts to increase municipal borrowing, develop a consultancy market, and promote gender equity in municipal governance. A robust performance-based Monitoring and Evaluation system, including periodic surveying of citizen attitudes and rigorous analysis of municipal capacities, ensures that GAP is measuring progress towards its objectives.
Underlying this approach are four guiding principles. One, to maintain the momentum of reform developed under the first phase of GAP (2004-2007) and during the first and subsequent years of GAP’s second phase.
During the first phase, GAP achieved exceptional results in creating a climate for reform, results on which the second phase of this program is building upon and expanding. Two, to build institutional and technical sustainability by improving the financial base and know-how in partner municipalities, strengthening their collective advocacy through the municipal associations, and laying the seeds for a dynamic local government consulting market.
Third, to foster local ownership of reform by providing ample opportunity for stakeholder input into municipal decision-making, providing demand-driven assistance to legacy municipalities, and creating working groups and advisory committees with members from the community and civil society to help ensure that municipalities receive the assistance they need and want to achieve their goals. And, four, to facilitate effective communicationas a means of achieving project goals and institutionalizing reforms. This includes internal communication within municipalities, horizontal communication between municipalities, and vertical communication between municipal and higher levels of government.
As GAP strengthens the capacity of local governments to better serve their citizens, it is working towards a more rational and accountable system of governance throughout B&H and pushing the country towards greater EU integration. Â Â
