Jorge Muñoz had long championed efforts to improve the lives of children in his relatively well-off district of Peru’s capital city, Lima. In 2019, he had a chance to take some of his ideas to scale. As newly elected mayor of metropolitan Lima, a city of almost 11 million, he oversaw basic services for about a third of the country’s population. At the time, a fifth of Peru’s population lived in poverty, and one in three people lived in informal settlements, where supporting families to give infants and toddlers a healthy start on life presented many challenges. The mayor directed the metropolitan government’s Social Development Department and a small interdisciplinary team of architects and social scientists (1) to identify lessons learned from pilot projects, (2) to establish new ways of assisting infants and young children, and (3) to coordinate to get the job done. When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in the capital city in 2020, the metropolitan government and its team continued this work, using some of their newly created systems to respond to the larger challenge of caring for vulnerable populations during months of emergency lockdown measures. The national government labeled Lima’s program, which engaged residents in project development, as a promising model for helping local governments implement a countrywide strategy for the promotion of early childhood development.
Miguelángel Verde drafted this case study with the help of Tyler McBrien based on interviews conducted in Lima, Peru, during 2020 and 2021. Case published August 2021. The Bernard van Leer Foundation supported this case study to foster early-stage policy learning.
By the mid-2010s, Istanbul, the biggest city in Turkey, had developed a reputation as a bustling concrete jungle notoriously unfriendly to the 1.2 million children aged four years and younger who lived there. As part of a decade-long construction boom, multistory skyscrapers increasingly replaced green spaces and parks throughout the city. But such insufficient consideration for the developmental needs of young children was not confined to the design of public and urban spaces: in many Istanbul homes, parents worked hard to put food on the table and had little time to consider how to give their young children the best possible start in life. In February 2016, a coalition of policy research organizations and private enterprises launched an ambitious effort to persuade officials in Istanbul’s 39 districts to begin taking the needs of young children seriously. The group drew on help from a network of prominent Turkish universities and partnered with four district municipalities that agreed to join a program called Istanbul95, supported by the Bernard van Leer Foundation, a Dutch foundation. The group created a digital-mapping tool to help locate vulnerable children, conducted regular home visits to support hundreds of families, and designed new prototypes for child-friendly public spaces. This effort to embed principles of early childhood development into the work of Turkish local governments passed a milestone when, in 2019, the major metropolitan area governments of Istanbul and İzmir also agreed to join, a key step toward reaching many more children.
Leon Schreiber and Gordon LaForge drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in Istanbul in June and July 2020. Case published November 2020. The Bernard van Leer Foundation supported this case study to foster early-stage policy learning.
In his interview with ISS, Issac Adewole discusses his term as Nigeria’s health minister (November 2015-May 2019), especially his role in the Basic Health Care Provision Fund. He explains how his ministry worked with others to create a transparent financial management system. He also discusses how the project was implemented throughout Nigeria and the challenges of designing a program involving many central government and state agencies in Nigeria’s federal system of government.
Transcript
Profile
Dr. Isaac Adewole is a professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the University of Ibadan and the former minister of health of Nigeria. He served as part of the Cabinet of President Muhammadu Buhari from 2015 to 2019. As minister of health, he took a leading role in the implementation of the Basic Health Care Provision Fund. Prior to his appointment, he served as vice chancellor of the University of Ibadan.
In the early 2010s in Tel Aviv, parents with children under four years of age were mostly on their own when it came to finding the child care services and support they needed. Although the city was an economic and technology powerhouse, the government showed little interest in providing for the youngest residents. Public concern about the cost and quality of day care and a shortage of opportunities to ensure infants and toddlers thrived drew parents into the streets. In 2016, the city began to respond. Municipal departments expanded services, launched a digital platform for parents, and renovated public spaces to suit children three years old and younger. By 2019, early childhood development had become a government priority and part of the mayor’s reelection campaign platform, although scaling services to some of the poorest neighborhoods remained a challenge.
Gordon LaForge drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in Tel Aviv in May 2019. The Bernard van Leer Foundation sponsored this case study to support learning in its Urban95 initiative. Savvas Verdis and Philipp Rode of the London School of Economics served as independent reviewers. Case published August 2019.
In this interview, Vicoria Esber discusses the development and implementation of the Report Card Survey and the Anti-Red Tape Act in the Philippine Civil Service Commission (CSC). She begins by recounting the various challenges for the program, from engaging Filipino clients to building trust with agencies, as well as the Commission's solutions for these obstacles. She also describes the measures they took to help agencies meet CSC standards, such as incentivizing compliance with good governance conditions and restructuring their Citizen's Charters. Finally, she explains the various networks and partnerships that helped the CSC design and conduct its surveys.
Transcript
Profile
At the time of this interview, Victoria Esber was the head of the Office for Strategy Management in the Philippine Civil Service Commission, where she oversaw strategy, implementation, and research efforts. Previously, she conducted economic research with the Philippines's National Economic and Development Authority. She holds a master's degree in National Security from the National Defense College of the Philippines and a bachelor's degree in Political Science from the University of the Philippines.
In 2009, South Africa’s second-most populous metropolitan area, Cape Town, adopted a new strategy to usher the rule of law into shantytowns that had sprung up on its outskirts, on municipal land. Without legal property rights, most of the residents of those communities were vulnerable to eviction and had access to neither municipal services nor home addresses they could use to obtain cell phone contracts or other basic goods. Lacking both the space to relocate households and the money to build enough new houses, the city partnered with a program called Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading to pilot an in situ settlement upgrade that allowed people to remain in their homes. Through an incremental tenure approach, the city issued occupancy certificates that recognized residents’ rights to remain on the land, that protected against arbitrary eviction, and that laid the groundwork for eventual access to the services enjoyed by city residents living in legal housing. The pilot project focused on Monwabisi Park, a community of about 25,000 on the southeastern edge of Cape Town. Beginning with a full enumeration of land, structures, and occupants, the project helped construct a community register, issue occupancy certificates, and extend electric power throughout the area. By November 2016, the first phase of the project had been completed, and hundreds of residents visited the community registration office every month to update their details. Using their occupancy certificates, residents could obtain cell phones, register their children in schools, receive medication from the health department, and open furniture store accounts. However, the second phase of the project—rezoning and physically upgrading the settlement—stalled in late 2016, as Cape Town officials wrestled with the basic question of how to install water and sewerage infrastructure in situ without moving any households. Even with that pause, though, Monwabisi Park offered important lessons for other cities and countries about how to provide poorer, more-transient citizens greater stability and financial access.
Lessons Learned
In a complex urban environment, community-led surveying and enumeration cannot be rushed. Time is required to build trust with and among different groups in the community and ensure accuracy.
Projects whose greatest impact will only materialize in the future need broad support to survive political turnover. Emphasis on the long-term benefits of settlement upgrading can help reduce resistance from an incoming administration concerned about supporting an outgoing mayor’s pet project.
Visible administration—having the project team physically working in the settlement on a regular basis—was key to maintaining an organized tenure administration system.
Securing upfront agreement with city engineers on infrastructure installations plans is vital. Failure to approve a design plan after the program has launched frustrates residents and undermines the progress already made.
Taking steps to help new holders of occupancy certificates understand their rights and the consequences of off-registry transfers should be a component of every incremental tenure program.
Leon Schreiber drafted this case study with Professor Michael Barry of the University of Calgary based on interviews conducted in Cape Town and Johannesburg, in July and August 2016. Case published February 2017.
Lagos State began the twenty-first century as a boomtown crippled by crime, traffic, blight, and corruption. A regional economic hub and burgeoning state of 13.4 million people, the megalopolis had a global reputation for government dysfunction. Two successively elected governors, Bola Tinubu and Babatunde Fashola, worked in tandem to set the state on a new course. Beginning in 1999, their administrations overhauled city governance, raised new revenues, improved security and sanitation, reduced traffic, expanded infrastructure and transit, and attracted global investment. By following through on their promises to constituents and forging a new civic contract between Lagos and its taxpayers, Tinubu and Fashola laid the foundations of a functional, livable, and sustainable metropolis.
Gabriel Kuris drafted this case study based on interviews conducted by Graeme Blair in Lagos, Nigeria, in August 2009 and by Kuris in Lagos, in October 2011 and in Providence, Rhode Island, in November 2012. Case published July 2014.
Inaugurated as mayor of Medellín at the beginning of 2004, Sergio Fajardo inherited a city roiled by decades of violence and corruption. During his four years in office, the charismatic former university professor turned Medellín around. He broke up clientelistic political networks, raised tax receipts, improved public services, introduced transparency fairs, established civic pacts, and restored citizens’ sense of hope. Fajardo left office at the end of 2007 with an unprecedented approval rating of nearly 90%. Though Medellín still faced significant challenges, the city was later identified as an exemplary case of good public administration by cities across Latin America and the Inter-American Development Bank. By 2010, Fajardo had been named the vice-presidential running mate of former Bogotá mayor Antanas Mockus in that year’s presidential elections.
Matthew Devlin and Sebastian Chaskel drafted this case study on the basis of interviews conducted in Colombia during October and November of 2009. Case published December 2010.
Del Miedo a la Esperanza en Colombia: Sergio Fajardo y Medellín, 2004 - 2007
SINOPSIS: Al asumir como alcalde de Medellín a comienzos del año 2004, Sergio Fajardo heredó una ciudad agobiada por décadas de violencia y corrupción. Durante los cuatro años de su mandato, este carismático antiguo profesor universitario cambió el rumbo de la ciudad de Medellín. Él desbarató las redes de clientelismo político, aumentó la recaudación de impuestos, mejoró los servicios públicos, introdujo ferias de transparencia, estableció pactos cívicos y restauró la esperanza de la ciudadanía. Fajardo concluyó su mandato a finales de 2007 con un margen de aprobación sin precedentes, cercano al 90%. Aunque Medellín aún debería enfrentar desafíos significativos, la ciudad fue reconocida como un caso ejemplar de buena administración pública tanto por ciudades a través de Latinoamérica como por el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo. Para mediados del año 2010, Fajardo había sido nombrado como compañero de fórmula del antiguo alcalde de Bogotá, Antanas Mockus, para las elecciones presidenciales de aquel año.
Matthew Devlin y Sebastian Chaskel redactaron este estudio de caso basado en entrevistas que se llevaron a cabo en Colombia en octubre y noviembre de 2009. El caso fue publicado en diciembre de 2010.
In May 2004, Colombia’s Office of the Presidency established a national-level agency, the Centro de Coordinación de Acción Integral, to manage the reintroduction of state institutions into areas that had been retaken from leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and drug traffickers. The agency set up a central Bogotá office from which it coordinated work in so-called consolidation zones around the country. In many of these areas, the government had either been absent for decades or never present. In the words of Andres Peñate, former vice minister of defense and an architect of the initiative, “Although we were all Colombians, it was almost like conquering a different country.” Despite setbacks, by late 2009 the agency had received broad-based domestic and international endorsement.
Matthew Devlin and Sebastian Chaskel drafted this case study on the basis of interviews conducted in Colombia during October and November 2009.
Although Bangalore had long been considered one of India's premier metropolitan areas, government agencies largely failed to respond to the city's rapid growth during the information technology boom of the 1990s. During that period, essential public services such as electricity, water and garbage collection fell into disarray, while property-tax revenue stagnated. Upset by collapsing public infrastructure, civil society groups began to demand broad reform of Bangalore's public agencies, many of which had a monopoly on the goods and services they provided. In 1999, the new head of Karnataka state, S.M. Krishna, introduced a high-profile campaign to revamp and revitalize Bangalore's underperforming service providers. By the end of Krishna's term in 2004, makeovers of several public agencies had produced significant improvements in the quantity and quality of services as well as in the agencies' public-approval ratings. However, Krishna's focus on urban reform in Bangalore carried a high political price in an overwhelmingly rural state. This case examines the operational details of Krishna's efforts to revamp service delivery in Bangalore and also highlights how political backlash can endanger reforms that are accomplished for one constituency at the perceived expense of another.
Michael Woldemariam drafted this case study on the basis of interviews conducted in Bangalore, India, in June 2010. Case published November 2010.