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USAID, Colombia, July 1996 – August
2000
To address the social disruption caused by armed conflict
between the Government of Colombia and guerillas, initiatives
have been conceived and implemented to bring more empowerment
to the civil governance process in Colombia. People have lost
their homes, there have been civil rights abuses, and local
governments have been made powerless through intimidation
and violence in their communities. This project had an objective
to establish a project design that would pave the way for
the local government-strengthening component of the proposed
Plan Colombia. Plan Colombia is a comprehensive effort that
addresses four root causes of Colombia’s current instability:
1) poor economic performance; 2) poor government management;
3) inequity in access to social services, especially among
the displaced populations; and 4) ineffectiveness of the judicial
sector, particularly related to the protection of human rights.
This Task Order not only sought to obtain a
program design, but an accompanying analysis of institutional
support structures, which would provide for effective implementation
of USAID/Colombia’s expected result of strengthening
local government in Colombia. The main thrust of the proposed
project was the empowerment of citizens as a result of decentralization
of the Government of Colombia. The Design Team delivered a
Program Design Document (PDD) for a local governance program
lasting five years. The document provided a detailed description
of the role of the US contractor that will be hired to provide
project management support, financial management and fiscal
oversight and technical assistance. The PDD included a break
down of the project’s objectives, gender issues, sustainability
mechanisms, and cooperating partners. The document outlined
the participatory roles of citizens, organizations, donors
and government agencies. An overall approach to the project’s
management structure was described, including a timeline for
key phases. Finally, the PDD described an appropriate and
applicable monitoring and design system that tracked and assessed
the accomplishments of each municipality in terms of citizen
participation, municipal transparency, accountability and
effective service delivery.
In addition, a key input was a one-day
conference of mayors in Bogota from targeted municipalities
in the Putumayo region of Colombia. TCGI organized and facilitated
this conference to ensure that the PDD was appropriately targeted.
Training of citizens and public officials figured prominently
in the project play, as the sustainability of a central decentralized
process is based on a motivated and informed population. As
a result of these activities the project introduced a dozen
new tools and models applied by cities and urban authorities
that helped them identify infrastructure priorities, develop
and manage implementation of projects, and strengthen municipal
accounting and budgeting.
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