MOVES TO IMPROVE UPON PUBLIC POLICY ADVOCACY

The Centre for Democratic Development, (CDD-Ghana), has provided information on key social services to improve upon public policy advocacy in the country. The data, in user friendly excel files and maps, presents information on the delivery and state of public goods and services like education, health and water. It is freely available on the Internet, and the objective is to furnish advocates, the media, researchers, and anyone engaging at the level of public policy, with facts and figures in their advocacy with those responsible for ensuring the provision of these services and improvement in their delivery. The data was from the 'IAMAWARE' project, launched by the CDD-Ghana in August 2012. The project was captioned, 'IAMAWARE,' that is a contraction of the phrase, 'I am aware," to empower citizens with information they can use to hold those in authority accountable for the delivery of public goods and services. It also provides the information by which public agencies can be assessed on their performance in the provision of these public goods and services. Key findings from the project, publicised at a dissemination workshop, included the fact that ordinary Ghanaians do not have access to duty bearers. There were also findings about the high level of interest in public affairs and issues relating to the management of the economy, and radio being the main source of information for most respondents surveyed. However, in spite of the public awareness on public issues, most respondents did not discuss them among their social groupings. The research also showed the dearth of civic consciousness among most respondents as they said they would not use any form of protest to press home their demands for better service and goods delivery. Presenting the findings, a Senior Research Fellow, Mr Robert Pwazaga, said a pre-election survey was undertaken on August 2012, as well as a post election survey in February 2013. The pre- election survey, provided the basis for discussions in the media on policy pledges by Members of Parliament and aspiring politicians at the local level in some of the 40 districts studied. Mr Pwazaga asked the media to use the information provided for their work and to endeavour to simplify their reporting on public issues, as some respondents said their inability to discuss these within their social groupings was because the issues were complicated For the future, he said, the CDD-Ghana would be expanding the research to monitor the delivery of other public services and goods, such as infrastructure and security. A Senior Fellow of the CDD-Ghana, Mr Francis Tsegah said with the nominations of District Chief Executives currently, the information could provide the constituents with information to get candidates to commit to certain benchmarks. He said some media partners, also used the information for issues-based reporting in some districts. A Deputy Director and Head of Research and Programmes, Dr Franklin Oduro said with programmes such as the 'IAMAWERE,' the CDD-Ghana intended to scale up its stakeholder base and its monitoring on wider public goods and services delivery. Published Daily Graphic, Monday, August 5, 2013